AC  8  . E8  1901 
Everett,  Charles  Carroll 
1829-1900. 

Essays 


' 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


https://archive.org/details/essaystheologicaOOever 


V 


Charles  Carroll  Cberett,  tD.  3D., 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  PAUL.  Crown  8vo, 
$1.50. 

POETRY,  COMEDY,  AND  DUTY.  Crown 
8vo,  $1.50. 

ESSAYS,  THEOLOGICAL  AND  LITERARY. 
Crown  8vo,  $1.75  net. 

HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  &  COMPANY, 
Boston  and  New  York. 


I 


ESSAYS 


THEOLOGICAL  AND  LITERARY 


BY 

CHARLES  CARROLL  EVERETT 

LATE  PROFESSOR  OF  THEOLOGY 
IN  HARVARD  UNIVERSITY 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 
(&i)Z  Cambri&ae 

1 90 1 


COPYRIGHT,  19OI,  BY  MILDRED  EVERETT 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 


Published  September ,  igoi 


PREFACE 


These  essays  are  published  in  response  to  the 
desire  expressed  by  a  number  of  Dr.  Everett’s  pupils 
and  friends  that  his  shorter  papers  might  be  col¬ 
lected  and  made  generally  accessible.  It  is  to  be 
regretted  that  they  must  be  sent  forth  without  hav¬ 
ing  had  the  benefit  of  his  final  revision.  But  they 
were  all  written  during  the  last  fifteen  years  of  his 
life,  and  may  be  regarded  as  expressing  his  mature 
thought.  He  might  have  retouched  them  here  and 
there,  expanding,  abridging,  or  refining  —  it  is  not 
likely  that  he  would  have  modified  their  positions  in 
any  important  respect. 

Most  of  the  essays  have  already  appeared  in  print, 
and  are  reproduced  by  the  kind  permission  of  the 
editors  of  two  magazines.  Eight  appeared  in  the 
New  World ,  vols.  i.-ix.,  1892-1900,  and  one,  “The 
Poems  of  Emerson,”  in  the  Andover  Review ,  vol.  vii., 
1887.  Of  the  remaining  papers,  that  on  “The  Phi¬ 
losophy  of  Browning  ”  was  read  before  the  Boston 
Browning  Club  about  ten  years  ago,  and  those  on 
“Instinct  and  Reason”  and  “The  Faust  of  Goethe” 
have  not  before  been  made  public. 

The  essays,  which  are  all  both  theological  and 
philosophical,  form  a  well-defined  unity,  and  exhibit 
the  several  sides  of  Dr.  Everett’s  thought  and  teach- 


iv  PREFACE 

in g.  They  fall  into  two  groups.  The  first  group, 
Nos.  1-8,  begins  with  the  rational  basis  of  religion 
in  general,  and  the  special  nature  of  Christianity 
(the  person  of  its  founder  and  its  distinctive  mark), 
and  then,  passing  over  the  earlier  periods  and  coming 
to  the  modern  era,  discusses  the  significance  of  two 
representative  thinkers,  Kant  and  Nietzsche,  the 
outcome  of  recent  naturalistic  views,  and  the  parts 
played  by  instinct  and  reason  respectively  in  the 
construction  of  human  thought,  especially  religious 
thought.  The  group  closes  with  an  historical  exami¬ 
nation  of  various  embodiments  of  evil,  and  of  the 
development  of  the  Christian  embodiment.  The 
second  group,  Nos.  9-12,  sets  before  us  these  same 
spiritual  ideas  as  they  are  found  imbedded  in  the 
poetry  of  Emerson,  Goethe,  Tennyson,  and  Browning. 
In  these  last  papers,  especially  in  that  on  “  Faust,” 
literary  criticism  is  prominent,  but  the  chief  interest 
is  in  the  philosophical  and  religious  conceptions. 

C.  H.  T. 


Cambridge,  Mass.,  July>  1901. 


CONTENTS 


I.  Reason  in  Religion  ...... 

II.  The  Historic  and  the  Ideal  Christ 

III.  The  Distinctive  Mark  of  Christianity 

IV.  Kant’s  Influence  in  Theology. 

V.  “Beyond  Good  and  Evil”  .... 

VI.  Naturalism  and  its  Results  . 

VII.  Instinct  and  Reason . 

VIII.  The  Devil . 

IX.  The  Poems  of  Emerson . 

X.  The  “  Faust  ”  of  Goethe  . 

XI.  Tennyson  and  Browning  as  Spiritual  Forces 
XII.  The  Philosophy  of  Browning  . 


PAGE 

.  i 

30 

•  54 
76 

.  99 

130 

•  157 
186 

.  219 
248 

•  3°4 
328 


ESSAYS 

THEOLOGICAL  AND  LITERARY 


I 

REASON  IN  RELIGION 

Suppose  a  child  to  have  this  problem  set  before 
him :  Given  fifty  dollars  to  be  divided  among  five 
men,  how  many  dollars  would  each  man  receive?  This 
problem,  however  simple  it  may  seem  to  us,  we  can 
imagine  to  be  a  little  formidable  to  the  child.  It  sets 
down  its  figures,  adding  ciphers  to  represent  cents, 
and  proceeds  by  long  division.  It  reaches  the  result 
that  each  man  will  receive  a  hundred  dollars.  Now, 
whether  or  not  it  discovers  the  cause  of  its  mistake, 
that  it  omitted  to  mark  off  the  ciphers  which  stood 
for  cents,  it  might  possibly  be  bright  enough  to  see 
that  the  answer  could  not  be  right.  This  might 
be  seen  to  be  unreasonable.  The  child’s  reason 
might  decide  that  the  result  of  its  reasoning  was  a 
mistake. 

It  is  related  of  General  Grant  that,  during  a  battle 
in  the  Wilderness,  it  was  reported  to  him  that  one  of 
the  wings  of  his  army  was  routed.  He  thought  a 
moment  and  said,  “  I  do  not  believe  it,”  and  went  on 
with  his  whittling.  The  report  was  too  unreasonable 
to  be  true. 

In  the  course  of  the  history  of  Christianity  the 


2 


ESSAYS 


Christian  world  in  general  has  been  made  to  believe 
many  strange  doctrines.  One  doctrine,  for  instance, 
that  has  been  received  by  many  with  joy,  and  has 
driven  others  insane,  is  that  God  from  eternity  elected 
some  to  everlasting  joy  and  some  to  everlasting  and 
unmitigated  torment.  Other  doctrines,  less  terrible 
but  otherwise  more  or  less  akin  to  this,  were  bound 
up  with  it.  These  doctrines  had  been  reached  by 
reasoning  that  seemed  faultless.  The  authority  of 
the  Bible  had  been  supported  by  miracles  which  were 
testified  to  by  witnesses  whose  knowledge  and  honesty 
could  not  be  doubted.  The  Bible  seemed  evidently 
to  teach  these  doctrines  ;  consequently  they  must  be 
believed.  While  many  accepted  these  results,  some 
were  found  to  dispute  them.  These  persons  had 
little  in  the  way  of  an  argument  to  offer.  They 
could  not  disprove  the  argument  from  miracle.  They 
had  no  satisfactory  exegesis  which  they  could  oppose 
to  that  which  was  current.  Whatever  later  science 
has  done  in  this  direction  was  not  at  their  command. 
Some  simply  denied  the  truth  of  these  doctrines  ; 
others  forced  the  Bible  to  say  something  that  was 
different.  But  whether  the  one  course  or  the  other 
was  taken,  the  doctrines  were  rejected  because  they 
were  unreasonable.  Men  urged  the  unreasonableness 
of  the  result  against  the  truth  of  the  reasoning  by 
which  this  result  had  been  reached. 

Experiences  such  as  I  have  referred  to  are  not 
wholly  unfamiliar  to  any.  We  consider  all  the  argu¬ 
ments  that  lead  to  a  certain  conclusion,  and  we  may 
perhaps  be  able  to  detect  no  flaw  in  them  ;  but  we 
reject  the  conclusion,  in  spite  of  the  apparent  truth 
and  validity  of  the  premises,  because  it  seems  to  us 
too  unreasonable  to  be  accepted. 


REASON  IN  RELIGION 


3 


We  recognize  thus  two  uses  of  the  word  “  reason." 
On  the  one  side  it  may  refer  to  the  reasoning  by 
which  certain  results  are  reached.  When  a  man  is 
asked  what  is  his  reason  for  believing  this  or  that, 
he  will  probably  give  the  arguments  by  which  the 
belief  is  supported.  On  the  other  hand,  we  use  the 
term  “  reason  "  with  reference  to  what  appears  to  us 
reasonable  or  unreasonable.  It  appears,  then,  that 
reason  in  the  one  sense  may  be  opposed  to  reason  in 
the  other.  Of  course,  there  are  minor  antagonisms 
between  different  utterances  of  the  same  form  of  rea¬ 
son.  In  the  case  of  reasoning,  arguments  may  be 
urged  against  arguments.  Thus,  also,  things  may 
have  different  aspects  ;  and  what  looks  reasonable 
from  one  point  of  view  may  look  unreasonable  from 
another.  At  present,  however,  I  wish  to  notice 
merely  this  fundamental  opposition  that  may  exist 
between  the  reason  which  affirms  that  a  certain  view 
is  true  or  false  because  it  is  reasonable  or  unreason¬ 
able,  and  the  reason  which  supports  or  denies  a  cer¬ 
tain  affirmation  on  the  strength  of  reasoning.  Al¬ 
though,  as  I  have  said,  the  term  reason  covers  both 
these  methods  of  procedure,  still  it  may  be  conven¬ 
ient,  though  not  perfectly  accurate,  to  speak  of  the 
reason  as  over  against  reasoning. 

We  thus  see  that  it  is  an  interesting  and  some¬ 
what  important  inquiry  which  seeks  to  fix  the  nature 
of  this  reason  that  undertakes,  independently  of  all 
argument,  and,  it  may  be,  against  all  evidence,  to 
determine  what  we  shall  and  what  we  shall  not  be¬ 
lieve. 

Let  us  look  at  the  cases  which  I  have  just  brought 
together  in  a  haphazard  way,  using  what  chanced  to 
occur  to  me.  Take  the  first  and  the  simplest  of  all, 


4 


ESSAYS 


the  child  with  its  sum.  On  what  ground  did  it  pro¬ 
nounce  the  result  of  its  ciphering  too  unreasonable  to 
be  true  ?  Perhaps  we  might  differ  a  little  in  our 
account  of  this.  Some  might  say  that  it  was  simply 
the  result  of  experience,  that  the  child  had  seen  that 
the  part  was  never  greater  than  the  whole.  Some, 
perhaps,  would  say  that  it  was  the  result  of  an  insight 
such  as  needs  the  confirmation  of  no  experience,  that 
from  the  very  nature  of  things,  from  the  very  nature 
of  the  whole  and  the  part,  as  seen  in  the  very  men¬ 
tion  of  them,  the  part  could  not  be  greater  than  the 
whole.  Neither  explanation  would  assume  that  the 
child  consciously  enunciated  this  somewhat  formidable 
proposition  ;  but  the  idea  would  be  that  the  child 
simply  recognized  in  a  concrete  instance  that  which 
the  formula  expresses  in  an  abstract  and  universal 
manner.  In  the  incident  from  General  Grant’s  life 
there  need  be  no  difference  of  interpretation.  From 
Grant’s  knowledge  of  men,  and  of  the  special  men 
who  formed  and  commanded  his  army,  from  his 
knowledge  of  the  strength  and  position  of  his  army 
and  those  of  the  enemy,  he  knew  that  the  story  of 
a  routed  wing  could  not  be  true.  In  this  case  the 
verdict  of  unreasonableness  was  based  upon  a  bit 
of  rapid  and  condensed  reasoning,  which  itself  was 
based  upon  knowledge  and  experience. 

When  we  come  to  the  position  that  affirmed  the 
unreasonableness  of  certain  doctrines  of  the  church, 
we  have  a  case  differing  from  the  two  just  named. 
Here  we  have  no  place  for  experience  or  for  argu¬ 
ments  based  upon  definite  knowledge  of  facts.  Men 
have  had  no  direct  experience  of  divine  beings  upon 
which  they  could  base  any  reasoning  in  regard  to 
their  habitual  ways.  Indeed,  the  actual  experience 


REASON  IN  RELIGION 


5 


of  life  might  very  well  be  appealed  to  in  defense  of 
some  of  these  doctrines.  In  life  itself  do  we  not  see 
persons  who  seem  to  have  been  appointed  to  joy  and 
others  who  seem  to  have  been  appointed  to  sorrow  ; 
some  who  are  born  to  ignorance  and  misery,  and,  we 
might  almost  say,  to  sin,  and  some  who  seem  to  have 
been  born  to  ease,  to  delight,  and,  we  might  almost 
say,  to  virtue  ?  Something  like  this  was  the  line  of 
argument  adopted  by  Bishop  Butler  in  his  famous 
“Analogy.”  Yet  in  face  of  all  these  facts,  and  of 
this  lack  of  experience  of  other  facts  which  might  be 
opposed  to  them,  the  reason  dared  to  deny  the  doc¬ 
trines  which  the  known  facts  might  seem  to  support. 
It  denied  that  there  was  any  God  ;  or  it  affirmed  that, 
if  there  were  a  God,  He  was  not  like  the  one  whom 
these  doctrines  described.  I  do  not  say  that  there 
are  no  arguments  besides  that  of  unreasonableness 
which  might  be  urged  against  these  views,  but  simply 
that  the  reason  has  often  denied  them  without  refer¬ 
ence  to  any  arguments.  It  has  spoken  like  a  mon¬ 
arch,  recognizing  no  authority  above  and  beyond  its 
own,  and  has  decided  absolutely,  by  its  own  right 
and  authority,  that  certain  things  could  not  and  must 
not  be  believed. 

The  reason  in  the  sense  in  which  I  now  use  it,  that 
power  of  insight,  or  that  assumption,  by  which  we 
pronounce  any  form  of  thought  or  statement  to  be 
reasonable  or  unreasonable,  may  thus  include  various 
elements.  Sometimes  it  might  be  difficult  for  the 
person  uttering  a  judgment  to  explain  precisely  what 
is  the  real  basis  of  it.  It  may  be  a  condensed  ex¬ 
pression  of  the  experience  of  life.  Past  thought, 
past  feeling,  past  experience,  may  all  be  united  in 
this  expression.  To  these  elements,  as  we  have  seen, 


6 


ESSAYS 


there  may  be  added  another.  The  statement  pro¬ 
nounced  reasonable  or  unreasonable  may  be  judged 
by  a  standard  which  is  independent  of  experience, 
which  is  purely  ideal.  The  sense  of  what  ought  to 
be  may  have  a  more  important  part  to  play  in  the 
judgment  than  any  knowledge  of  what  is  or  has  been. 
One  may  go  so  far  as  to  affirm  that  what,  according 
to  his  ideal  standard,  ought  to  be,  must  be ;  or  that 
what  ought  not  to  be,  cannot  be.  This  is  the  nature 
of  the  judgment  which,  as  we  have  seen,  condemned 
some  of  the  religious  doctrines  of  the  past,  even  when 
all  the  authority  of  tradition  and  much  of  that  of 
experience  seemed  to  be  in  their  favor.  This  ideal 
standard  of  reasonableness  may  have  been  recognized 
in  its  isolation,  or  it  may  have  been  blended  with  the 
other  elements  which  have  been  named.  It  may 
exist  with  some  approach  to  perfection  ;  or  it  may  be 
very  imperfectly  developed.  In  either  case  the  in¬ 
dividual  may  accept  it  as  final. 

Thus  the  judgment  in  regard  to  what  is  reasonable 
or  unreasonable  is  the  expression  of  the  whole  intel¬ 
lectual  or  spiritual  condition  of  the  man  who  makes 
the  judgment.  It  is  the  utterance  of  the  entire  self. 
It  marks  the  position  which  the  man  has  reached 
in  his  development ;  and  it  will  therefore  vary  im¬ 
mensely  according  to  the  community  and  the  age 
in  which  one  lives.  Just  as  arguments  on  one  side 
may  be  met  by  arguments  on  the  other,  so  the  judg¬ 
ment  of  the  reason  may  be  met  by  counter-judgments. 
What  is  perfectly  reasonable  to  one  man,  or  to  one 
age,  may  be  pronounced  absurdly  unreasonable  by 
another.  In  any  line  of  national  development  each 
age  has  its  distinct  method  of  thought  and  feeling. 
It  has  its  assumptions  and  its  presumptions.  It  has 


REASON  IN  RELIGION 


7 


its  traditions  and  its  habits.  It  has  its  standard  of 
right  and  wrong,  of  the  probable  and  the  improbable. 
It  has  its  beliefs,  the  source  of  which  and  the  evi¬ 
dence  underlying  which  it  would  find  in  many  cases 
to  be  wholly  unknown  and  unsuspected.  In  many 
cases  the  question  as  to  origin  and  basis  is  not  raised, 
is  not  even  thought  of. 

Of  course,  in  every  age,  in  the  same  community, 
there  are  very  great  differences  between  class  and 
class,  and  between  person  and  person.  Some  of  the 
assumptions  to  which  I  have  referred  are  indeed 
common  to  all  classes  and  all  persons  in  any  given 
age,  but  others  belong  to  certain  spheres  of  life  and 
special  companionship.  Even  those  that  differ  have, 
however,  a  certain  community,  or  stand  in  a  certain 
relationship  to  one  another.  Persons  living  side  by 
side  may  practically  belong  to  different  ages.  Per¬ 
sons  are  living  to-day  who  might  seem  to  belong  to 
the  thirteenth  century,  or  to  the  sixteenth,  or  to  the 
seventeenth,  or,  on  the  other  hand,  to  the  twentieth, 
or  even  to  some  later  and  better  age  of  the  world. 
But  these  men  are  not  precisely  what  they  would 
have  been  in  these  past  centuries,  or  would  be 
in  those  which  are  to  come.  No  man  can  escape 
wholly  from  the  age  in  which  he  lives.  This  com¬ 
munity  between  those  living  in  the  same  age  and  in 
the  same  mental  environment  forms  what  Leslie 
Stephen  calls  the  “social  tissue.”  It  is  this  social 
.  tissue,  as  it  is  embodied  in  different  individuals,  that 
plays  a  large  part  in  the  judgment  as  to  what  is  rea¬ 
sonable. 

As  this  judgment  is  formed  to  a  large  extent, 
though  not  altogether,  independently  of  conscious 
reasoning,  so  it  is  changed  to  a  large  extent,  though 


8 


t 


ESSAYS 


not  wholly,  without  conscious  reasoning.  Lecky 
calls  attention  to  the  fact  that  no  arguments  could 
be  used  to-day  against  belief  in  witchcraft  or  the  hang¬ 
ing  of  persons  suspected  of  being  witches,  that  could 
not  have  been  used  against  them  in  earlier  days. 
The  change  is  simply  that  the  spirit  of  the  age  is 
against  the  belief  and  the  practice.  What  was 
thought  reasonable  once  is  judged  to  be  unreasonable 
to-day.  Persecution,  in  the  bloody  or  fiery  sense, 
would  probably  not  be  used  to-day  by  any  church  even 
if  it  had  the  power.  The  spirit  of  the  age  is  against 
it.  Petty  forms  of  persecution  may  be  and  are  in¬ 
dulged  in,  even  in  civilized  communities  ;  but  the 
grand  forms  of  persecution  are  in  the  past. 

Thus  the  judgment  of  what  is  reasonable  or  unrea¬ 
sonable  in  religious  belief  springs  largely  out  of  this 
social  tissue,  or  spirit  of  the  age.  As  this  slowly 
changes,  the  notion  of  what  is  reasonable  or  unreason¬ 
able  changes  with  it.  The  great  advance  which  has 
been  made  in  the  religions  of  the  world  has  resulted 
less  from  conscious  reasoning  than  from  the  varying 
judgment  as  to  what  is  reasonable.  Take  the  devel¬ 
opment  of  the  religion  of  Greece,  for  instance.  To 
the  larger  and  more  developed  spirits  it  seemed  un¬ 
reasonable  that  the  gods  should  be  such  as  the  popu¬ 
lar  mythology  described  them,  and  so  these  larger 
spirits  reached  the  idea  of  an  absolute  divinity  who 
was  wise  and  good.  It  would  appear  that  they  had 
little  basis  for  reasoning  that  was  not  open  to  all. 
They  felt,  however,  that  it  was  impossible  that  the 
divinities  could  be  such  as  tradition  and  the  common 
thought  of  men  would  make  them.  They  felt  that, 
if  the  divinities  were  to  be  worshiped,  they  must  be 
worshipful.  And  it  was  out  of  this  feeling  of  worthi- 


REASON  IN  RELIGION 


9 


ness  and  of  the  reality  of  what  seemed  most  worthy 
that  the  larger  thought  and  faith  arose. 

I  have  spoken  of  this  judgment  of  reasonableness 
as  a  feeling.  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  this  is  a 
true  name  for  that  mental  condition  out  of  which 
the  judgment  springs.  It  is,  as  I  have  said,  the  con¬ 
densed  result  of  the  whole  mental  and  spiritual 
development,  —  a  result  that  often  is  not  reached  by 
conscious  reasoning  which  a  man  can  analyze  and  of 
which  he  can  give  an  account.  It  is  rather  the  basis 
of  reasoning  than  the  result  of  it.  It  is  something 
that  is  not  reasoned  to,  but  is  reasoned  from.  It 
thus  seems  to  belong  less  to  the  intellect  than  to  the 
feeling.  One  feels  that  it  must  be  so.  The  noblest 
spirits  of  Greece  felt  that  the  gods  must  be  worthier 
than  the  common  thought  would  make  them.  Thus 
reason  has  been  the  guide  which  has  led  men  up 
from  the  depths  of  superstition  to  the  grander  heights 
which  later  ages  have  reached. 

I  have  spoken  as  if  the  judgment  of  reasonableness 
had  been  to  a  large  extent  that  of  the  age.  The 
question  here  meets  us,  How  then  does  any  age 
advance  ?  How  can  it  escape  from  its  own  limita¬ 
tions  ? 

In  reply  to  this  question  it  may  be  suggested  that 
life  is  always  introducing  new  factors  into  the  mental 
structure  of  the  world.  New  discoveries,  like  that 
of  this  Western  Continent,  broaden  it.  Profound  ex¬ 
periences  deepen  it.  Thought  and  feeling,  though 
they  cannot  escape  wholly  from  their  age,  may  yet 
stretch  somewhat  the  bands  that  unite  them  with  it ; 
and  the  spirit  of  the  age  may  move  forward  with  them. 
The  movement  of  any  age  is  like  that  of  an  army. 
It  moves  rank  behind  rank  ;  none  can  escape  from 


IO 


ESSAYS 


the  army  ;  every  man  wears  its  uniform  ;  but  some 
are  merely  followers  and  others  are  leaders.  The 
advance  in  the  world  has  been  made  through  the 
leadership  of  great  souls  who  have  obeyed  the  touch 
of  reason  and  have  led  the  elect  spirits  that  followed 
them,  like  the  volunteers  to  some  perilous  enterprise, 
through  the  darkness  of  superstition  to  heights  where 
there  was  at  least  some  glimmer  of  a  brighter  sun. 

It  may  be  urged  that,  even  if  what  has  been  said 
is  to  a  large  extent  true,  if  the  reason  has  been  the 
guiding  principle  in  the  advance  of  the  world,  yet  the 
account  given  of  it  shows  how  little  reliance  can  be 
placed  upon  it.  We  have  seen  that,  after  all,  it  is  an 
individual  matter.  It  depends  upon  external  in¬ 
fluences,  upon  the  state  of  development  which  one 
may  chance  to  have  reached.  As  we  have  seen, 
what  is  reasonable  to  one  person  or  to  one  age  may 
be  unreasonable  to  another.  Thus  it  may  be  urged 
that  reason  is  not  a  clear  light  according  to  which 
one  may  walk  in  confidence,  but  a  sort  of  will-o’-the- 
wisp,  shining  now  here  and  now  there,  and  leading 
through  devious  and  often  dangerous  ways.  What 
is  needed,  it  may  be  claimed,  is  some  clearly  defined 
authoritative  and  absolute  revelation  manifested  by 
means  of  such  marks  as  may  make  it  unmistakable. 
Such  revelation,  it  may  be  said,  is  like  the  clear  and 
steady  light  of  the  sun,  by  the  aid  of  which  men  may 
walk  in  safety,  certain  to  reach  at  last  their  journey’s 
proper  goal. 

However  conclusive  such  reasoning  may  seem,  the 
history  of  the  world  will  hardly  justify  the  result  to 
which  it  has  led.  We  can  indeed  conceive  the  ab¬ 
stract  possibility  of  such  a  revelation,  and  we  may 
admit  that  by  it  mankind  might  have  been  spared 


REASON  IN  RELIGION  u 

some  wandering  and  failure.  We  do  not  find  in  the 
world,  however,  such  a  revelation.  I  do  not  here 
raise  the  question  whether  God  has  revealed  Himself 
in  a  way  that  may  be  called  supernatural  in  the  ordi¬ 
nary  use  of  this  word,  that  is,  in  a  way  to  interrupt 
the  course  of  human  development  and  introduce  a 
wholly  new  factor.  I  do  not  here  raise  the  question 
whether  Christianity  is  based  upon  such  a  revelation  ; 
I  insist  only  that  if  there  has  been  such  a  revelation 
it  has  not  accomplished  what  is  claimed  for  it  in  the 
form  of  thought  to  which  I  have  just  referred.  It 
has  not  proved  the  clear  and  steady  light  according 
to  which  men  have  been  able  to  walk  in  confidence 
and  safety.  Consider  the  history  of  Christianity  : 
consider  the  different  interpretations  of  it  that  have 
been  given ;  consider  the  extravagance,  even  the 
horror,  of  doctrines  that  have  been  based  upon  it ; 
consider  the  cruel  persecutions  which  it  has  inspired. 
Where  could  we  find  more  terrible  torment  or  more 
refined  cruelty  than  have  been  brought  about  by 
Christianity  ?  But  this,  it  may  be  urged,  was  because 
Christianity  was  misunderstood.  It  was  not  the  real 
Christianity  that  has  inspired  persecution,  whether 
of  the  sharper  or  of  the  milder  form.  The  true  Chris¬ 
tianity,  it  may  be  said,  would  make  men  patient  and 
loving  as,  full  of  hope,  they  press  on  to  the  fulfillment 
of  its  sublime  promises.  All  this  may  be  true.  But 
it  simply  shows  that  revelation  has  not  furnished  to 
the  world  that  safe  and  steady  light  which  was 
needed.  It  also  has  led  men  into  wild  wandering 
in  dangerous  and  toilsome  ways,  such  as  without  it 
might  never  have  been  found.  Nothing  has  yet 
appeared  in  the  world  that  has  prevented  mistake 
and  wandering. 


12 


ESSAYS 


There  is,  then,  no  guide  more  sure  than  reason. 
Men  may  scorn  it,  but  to  it  they  must  finally,  in  some 
poor  sort  at  least,  return.  The  defenders  of  the 
dogmas  of  the  church  have  sometimes  set  reason  at 
defiance.  They  insisted  upon  the  unreasonableness 
of  the  doctrines  that  they  taught.  They  gloried  in 
it.  They  bade  men  do  dishonor  to  reason,  trample 
it  under  foot.  Human  reason  has  been  used  as  a 
term  of  mockery.  Thus  revelation  might  seem  to  be 
independent  of  reason.  But  why  should  men  accept 
such  results  ?  and  here  come  the  arguments  that 
prove  the  authority  of  the  revelation,  the  reasons  why 
men  should  accept  it  and  submit  to  it  absolutely. 
That  is,  the  last  appeal  has  been  to  reason  itself,  rea¬ 
son  that  takes  form  in  argumentation.  This,  how¬ 
ever,  only  leads  to  the  higher  form  of  reason  that  man¬ 
ifests  itself  in  reasonableness.  Reason  was  appealed 
to,  to  show  that  reason  must  be  rejected.  From  rea¬ 
son  under  one  form  or  other  we  cannot  escape.  We 
may  apply  to  it  the  illustration  which  St.  Anselm  ap¬ 
plied  to  God  :  We  cannot  escape,  he  said,  from  under 
the  heavens.  If  a  man  flees  from  under  one  part  of  the 
heavens,  it  is  only  to  find  himself  under  another  part 
of  the  same.  So,  he  said,  if  one  flees  from  God  com¬ 
manding,  it  is  only  to  find  himself  in  the  presence  of 
God  punishing.  In  like  manner  we  may  say  that  we 
cannot  flee  from  reason.  If,  with  those  who  insist 
upon  the  authority  of  a  special  and  authoritative 
revelation,  we  flee  from  reason  affirming,  it  is  only  to 
flee  to  reason  arguing.  And  so,  after  all,  whether  it 
be  for  good  or  for  evil,  whether  we  can  or  cannot  con¬ 
ceive  of  anything  that  seems  more  desirable,  reason 
remains  our  only  guide.  We  may  admit  much  that 
has  been  said  against  it.  We  may  admit  that  it  falls 


REASON  IN  RELIGION 


i3 

often  into  self-contradiction,  that  its  utterances  de¬ 
pend  largely  upon  time  and  place  and  upon  individual 
idiosyncrasy.  But  what  can  we  find  in  the  world 
that  is  independent  of  these  ?  We  may  as  well  give 
up  once  for  all  the  thought  of  a  ready-made  perfect 
truth  that  may  be  had  for  the  asking  or  the  grasping, 
and  make  the  best  of  the  possibilities  and  powers 
that  have  actually  been  given  us. 

Let  no  one  imagine  that  I  mean  to  imply  that  we  can 
be  certain  of  nothing.  The  very  basis  of  my  reason¬ 
ing  is  the  fact  of  certainty.  No  one  can  look  into 
his  own  consciousness  and  not  find  that  he  is  certain 
of  a  multitude  of  things  ;  that  there  are  truths  which 
he  cannot  doubt,  and  that  upon  these  his  life  is 
based.  I  raise  no  question  of  the  fact  of  certainty,  I 
but  seek  the  basis  upon  which  this  certainty  rests. 
We  may  be  mistaken  ;  but  the  knowledge  of  this 
possibility  does  not  affect  our  confidence  in  that  of 
which  we  feel  assured.  Our  truth  may  not  be  a 
finality,  for  the  world  or  for  ourselves  ;  but  none  the 
less  we  absolutely  trust  and  cannot  help  trusting  to 
our  reason,  and  to  the  truth  of  that  which  it  reveals. 

When  we  see  what  reason  has  actually  accom¬ 
plished,  though  we  may  admit  its  weakness  and  its 
frequent  contradictions  and  failures,  yet  we  may  see 
that  it  has  not  wholly  failed.  If  its  utterances  de¬ 
pend  largely  on  the  degree  of  development  men  have 
reached,  we  may  see  that,  so  far  as  the  historical 
peoples  are  concerned,  this  development,  on  the 
whole,  has  been  a  progressive  one.  There  have  been 
retrogression  and  wandering,  it  is  true,  but  as  a  road 
that  is  not  free  from  winding,  if  viewed  at  a  little 
distance  from  above,  may  be  seen  to  have  a  fairly 
direct  course,  so  the  line  of  development  of  the  his- 


14 


ESSAYS 


torical  peoples  has  been  on  the  whole  an  advancing 
one.  Experience  has  moulded  men’s  thoughts. 
Reasoning  has  enlarged  them.  More  and  more  the 
great  ideals  of  life  have  emerged  out  of  the  confusion 
and  contradictions  of  the  world.  Men  have  not  yet 
reached  the  region  of  perfect  light.  Complete  and 
absolute  truth  does  not  yet  belong  to  man,  and  never 
will  belong  to  him.  Yet,  because  the  development 
of  man  has  been,  on  the  whole,  in  the  direction  of  a 
fuller  and  larger  life,  so  the  reason  of  man,  which  is 
the  exponent  of  this  development,  has  reached  larger 
and  fuller  results.  The  element  of  accident,  which 
may  have  seemed  to  be  involved  in  the  statement  of 
the  dependence  of  reason  upon  the  development  of 
the  individual  that  uses  it,  is  removed,  at  least  in 
some  degree,  because  the  development  of  the  indi¬ 
vidual  is  to  a  large  degree  bound  up  with  that  of  his 
race,  and  this  has  been  an  advancing  one. 

I  have  contrasted  the  reason  by  which  a  proposi¬ 
tion  is  affirmed  to  be  reasonable  or  unreasonable  with 
the  reason  that  takes  form  in  a  process  of  reasoning. 
This  was  done  for  convenience  because,  practically 
speaking,  there  is  this  difference.  When,  however, 
we  take  a  larger  view,  the  contrast  disappears.  Rea¬ 
soning  is  merely  included  in  the  larger  sphere  of 
the  reason.  We  accept  the  results  of  an  argument 
because  it  seems  to  us  reasonable  to  assume  that  a 
proposition  which  can  be  so  defended  is  true.  In 
other  words,  it  seems  reasonable  to  accept  a  certain 
amount  of  proof  as  convincing.  In  point  of  fact 
nothing  can  be  absolutely  proved.  If  a  chain  of 
argument  is  to  support  any  weight,  it  must,  like  any 
other  chain,  be  attached  to  something  that  is  fixed. 
A  chain  without  a  staple,  or  some  other  fixed  point, 


REASON  IN  RELIGION 


15 


is  powerless.  An  endless  chain  is  inconceivable,  and 
even  if  such  a  thing  were  possible  it  would  be  useless. 
In  like  manner  an  endless  chain  of  reasoning  is  im¬ 
possible  ;  and,  if  it  could  exist,  it  would  be  as  useless 
as  any  other  endless  chain.  The  use  of  an  argument 
is  that  it  leads  our  thought  to  something  that  is 
accepted  without  argument.  The  proposition  that 
may  have  seemed  at  first  doubtful  is  attached  to 
something  that  admits  of  no  doubt,  and  is  regarded 
as  being  fixed  and  firm  like  that.  In  the  syllogistic 
argument  two  things  are  taken  for  granted,  namely, 
the  two  premises.  These  are  the  staples  that  hold 
the  chain.  These  may  be  found  not  to  be  firm.  We 
then  must  go  beyond  them  till  we  reach  something 
that  is  indubitable,  something,  that  is,  which  we  must 
accept  without  proof,  which  we  must  accept  simply 
because  it  is  self-evident.  These  staples  are  driven 
in  here  and  there,  according  to  the  mental  develop¬ 
ment  of  one  individual  and  another.  One  man  will 
reach  what  satisfies  him  as  being  solid  and  trust¬ 
worthy  much  sooner  than  another.  The  same  indi¬ 
vidual  will  be  more  or  less  careful  according  to  the 
necessities  of  the  case.  Practically  we  accept  as  true 
many  things  which,  from  a  scientific  point  of  view, 
would  be  uncertain.  Many,  and  very  often  all,  of  us 
accept  as  sufficient  what  has  come  to  us  by  way  of 
tradition,  or  what  is  generally  believed  in  our  com¬ 
munity.  It  often  does  not  occur  to  us  to  go  beyond 
this.  In  many  matters  it  does  not  seem  worth  while. 
Who  of  us  could  give  any  sufficient  reason  for  the 
belief  that  the  tides  are  caused  by  the  moon,  or 
even  for  the  belief  that  the  earth  revolves  about  the 
sun  ?  Most  believe  these  things  because  everybody 
else  believes  them.  We  say  that  we  believe  them 


i6 


ESSAYS 


because  it  is  the  teaching  of  science.  But  how  do 
we  know  even  this  ?  How  many  of  us  have  talked 
about  the  matter  with  a  man  of  independent  author¬ 
ity,  so  that  we  could  receive  the  teaching  of  science 
at  first  hand  ?  Then,  too,  how  many  things  has 
science  taught  that  science  has  afterward  contra¬ 
dicted !  One’s  prejudices  often  seem  sufficient 
ground  for  belief ;  or  rather,  we  accept  a  basis  for 
belief  that  has  no  other  support  than  prejudice.  In 
an  argumentum  ad  hominem  we  sound  a  man’s  mind 
just  as  we  try  a  wall  into  which  we  mean  to  drive  a 
staple.  We  tap  it  till  we  reach  a  spot  where  it  feels 
and  sounds  solid,  and  we  think  that  there  our  staple 
will  stick.  The  mind  of  another  might  be  different. 

The  searcher  for  truth  goes  behind  these  superfi¬ 
cial  and  convenient  supports.  The  reformer,  whether 
of  thought  or  of  life,  brings  forward  the  great  ham¬ 
mer  of  his  intellect.  He  pounds  the  wall  that  had 
seemed  so  solid  to  us,  shows  us  that  it  sounds  hol¬ 
low,  bids  us  seek  some  firmer  basis  for  our  beliefs 
and  our  habits  of  life,  and  shows  us  where,  accord¬ 
ing  to  his  thought,  such  a  solid  basis  may  be  found. 
Of  course  the  ultimate  and  absolute  basis  cannot 
be  reached  until  we  have  found  the  fundamental 
principles  of  our  reason.  If  we  can  reach  these, 
we  have  found  something  that  is  enduring,  and  argu¬ 
ments  that  lead  back  to  these  are  attached  to  a  firm 
support. 

The  outcome  of  this  whole  discussion  is  that  we 
pursue  our  reasoning  until  it  seems  unreasonable  to 
reject  the  result  to  which  it  leads.  The  beliefs  that 
we  regard  as  most  logically  defended  rest  finally  upon 
our  recognition  of  reasonableness  or  unreasonable¬ 
ness.  A  simpler  statement  would  be  that  we  pursue 


REASON  IN  RELIGION 


1 7 


our  reasoning  till  we  reach  a  point  where  we  cannot 
help  believing ;  that  we  believe  because  we  must. 

From  another  point  of  view  we  may  illustrate  the 
controlling  power  of  the  ultimate  reason  in  our  lives. 
We  all  believe  that  life  should  be  reasonable.  A 
man  should  know  what  he  is  living  for ;  and  to  this, 
perhaps,  most  would  add,  why  he  is  living  for  it.  In 
fact,  however,  this  latter  is  something  for  which  no 
reason  can  be  given.  At  least,  in  giving  an  account 
of  the  matter,  we  reach  at  last  a  reason  which  is 
sufficient  in  itself  and  beyond  which  we  cannot  go. 
A  man,  for  instance,  is  laboring  to  get  rich.  Why 
does  he  want  to  be  rich  ?  In  answering  this  question 
he  may  point  to  the  goods  which  money  can  buy,  to 
comforts  and  luxuries,  to  freedom  from  harassing 
toil  and  from  the  multitude  of  cares  and  anxieties  by 
which  poverty  is  so  often  surrounded.  He  may  point 
to  the  social  consideration  which  wealth  may  bring, 
and  to  the  avenues  of  pleasure  which  it  may  open. 
If  you  should  ask  him  why  he  desires  all  these  things, 
he  would  probably  stare  at  you  with  amazement,  as  if 
you  lacked  common  sense.  If  he  saw  his  way  to  an 
answer,  he  would  probably  say  that  with  all  these 
things  he  would  be  happier  than  he  would  be  without 
them.  If  you  still  questioned  and  asked  why  he 
wished  to  be  happy,  he  would  be  dumb.  He  could 
not  answer  the  question.  Neither  you  nor  any  one 
else  could  answer  it.  In  fact,  the  question  is  unan¬ 
swerable. 

The  same  is  true  in  the  case  of  the  larger  objects 
of  life.  One  man  devotes  himself  to  study.  Possibly 
his  object  may  be  fame.  Possibly  it  may  be  money. 
Perhaps  it  is  truth.  Why  should  he  spend  his  life 
in  striving  to  attain  the  truth  ?  He  would  be  sur- 


i8 


ESSAYS 


prised  at  the  question.  It  seems  such  a  reasonable 
thing  to  do  that  he  marvels  that  any  one  should  ask 
why  he  does  it.  Another  may  live  for  the  good  of 
his  fellow  men.  He  sacrifices  his  own  ease,  his 
private  pleasure,  and  such  money  as  he  may  have. 
He  does  it  simply  because  it  seems  the  most  natural 
thing  in  the  world.  So  it  is  with  the  great  law  of 
righteousness.  Why  should  men  feel  impelled  to  do 
right  ?  There  are  theories  upon  theories.  At  last 
we  come  upon  Kant,  who  says  that  a  man  must  do 
right  simply  because  it  is  right.  This  is  an  answer 
that  assumes  the  impossibility  of  an  answer.  It  is 
such  an  answer  as  the  child’s  “  Because,”  that  goes 
no  further. 

In  fact,  all  these  tendencies  of  human  nature,  the 
desire  for  happiness,  the  desire  for  power,  the  im¬ 
pulse  to  seek  the  truth,  the  impulse  to  philanthropy, 
all  these,  and  one  cannot  say  how  many  others,  are 
instinctive.  All  taken  together  make  up  the  sum  of 
the  instincts  which  compose  the  life  of  man.  Every 
animate  object  is,  we  might  say,  a  complex  of  in¬ 
stincts.  Man  is  the  most  concrete  organism  that 
exists,  and  with  him  these  instincts  are  more  numer¬ 
ous  and  far  reaching  than  those  to  be  found  in  minor 
and  lower  organisms.  These  instincts  we  cannot  get 
behind  or  outside  of.  They  make  up  our  life.  One 
might  say  that  they  set  the  bounds  to  our  life,  except 
that  some  of  them  stretch  far  away  into  the  bound¬ 
less.  Of  course  some  of  these  are  superficial.  They 
are  merely  concrete  forms  of  others  that  are  more 
fundamental.  Some  are  the  results,  doubtless,  of 
inherited  habits.  Some,  in  practice  hardly  to  be 
distinguished  from  the  others,  are  simply  the  results 
of  one’s  own  habits.  Some,  however,  are  more  pro- 


REASON  IN  RELIGION 


19 


found  and  are  bound  up  with  the  fundamental  ele¬ 
ments  and  activities  of  our  life.  One  might  say 
more  simply  that  they  are  bound  up  with  the  essen¬ 
tial  activities  of  our  lives,  for  I  suppose  that  there  is 
no  element  of  life  that  is  not  an  activity. 

Men  speak  of  innate  ideas  as  though  they  were 
something  tacked  on  an  organism  at  its  very  start, 
or  somehow  branded  upon  it  in  letters  that  may  be 
read  by  it.  Others  study  their  own  organism  and 
that  of  the  world  at  large,  of  infants  and  savages. 
They  find  no  such  tags  or  brands.  In  fact,  what  are 
called  innate  ideas,  so  far  as  they  exist,  are  simply 
late  abstractions  made  from  certain  active  tendencies 
which  do  not  so  much  belong  to,  as  constitute,  the 
life.  Take,  for  instance,  the  great  idea  of  the  unity 
of  the  world.  As  soon  as  man  begins  to  think,  he 
unconsciously  postulates  this.  For  what  is  Thought  ? 
Thought  is  the  recognition,  or  the  attempt  at  the 
recognition,  of  the  relations  between  objects.  The 
man,  the  savage,  if  you  will,  sees  something  that 
makes  him  think.  His  thought  is  the  attempt  to 
answer  the  question,  more  or  less  consciously  present 
to  his  mind,  as  to  the  relation  between  this  object 
and  the  complex  of  objects  that  constitutes  his  world. 
The  question  is  not  whether  such  relation  exists  ;  but 
what  is  the  relation.  He  assumes,  consciously  or 
otherwise,  that  there  is  a  relation,  and  that  he  has 
simply  to  seek  its  nature.  This  assumption  of  rela¬ 
tionship  is  made  in  regard  to  every  object  that  inter¬ 
ests  him.  It  involves  the  tacit  assumption  that  such 
relationship  exists  between  all  objects.  Here  we 
have,  at  the  very  first  movement  of  thought,  the  im¬ 
plication  of  the  organic  unity  of  the  world.  Of  this 
organic  unity  the  savage  knows  nothing.  He  could 


20 


ESSAYS 


not  understand  what  you  meant  if  you  spoke  of  it. 
Instinct  is  often  defined  as  the  tendency  in  any  ani¬ 
mate  organism  to  act  as  if  it  knew  something  it 
does  not  know.  The  definition  is  an  incomplete  one  ; 
but  it  is  true  as  far  as  it  goes.  So  even  the  savage 
thinks  as  if  he  knew  that  all  the  objects  in  the  uni¬ 
verse  were  bound  together  in  organic  relationship. 
Of  this  fact,  as  has  been  said,  he  has  no  comprehen¬ 
sion  and  no  idea.  This  assumption  comes  to  con¬ 
sciousness  only  after  ages  of  experience  and  thought. 
It  may  be  science  that  formulates  it  at  last  in  a 
preposition  and  claims  to  have  discovered  it.  In 
fact,  science  rests  upon  it. 

It  is  so  with  the  other  great  ideals  of  life.  They 
are  bound  up  in  certain  primary  impulses  that  are 
followed  almost  unconsciously.  One  has  an  impulse, 
for  instance,  to  help  another  in  some  hour  of  need. 
Why  should  he  not  ?  It  is  the  most  natural  thing 
in  the  world.  Why  should  he  ?  The  question  is  not 
raised.  It  is  an  impulse  as  natural  as  any  other.  It 
is  the  practical  recognition  of  the  tie  that  binds  him  to 
his  fellows.  The  tie  is  so  slight  that  it  seems  insig¬ 
nificant,  hardly  noticeable.  Yet  it  is  real ;  and  it  is 
something  that  could  not  exist  except  as  a  part  of  the 
universal  relation  in  which  all  individuals  stand  to  one 
another  and  to  the  whole.  By  degrees,  just  as  the 
ideal  of  truth  disentangles  itself  from  the  search  after 
truths,  until  at  last  it  stands  in  its  completeness  be¬ 
fore  the  spiritual  vision,  so  the  ideal  of  universal  rela¬ 
tionship  disentangles  itself  from  the  special  relation¬ 
ships  in  which  men  have  lived.  Out  from  the  mass 
of  special  duties  rises  the  ideal  of  duty  in  its  purity 
and  vastness.  So  out  of  the  loves  which  bind  the 
individual  to  certain  of  his  fellows  rises  the  ideal  of 


REASON  IN  RELIGION 


21 


a  universal  love.  So  out  from  the  admiration  of 
this  or  that  pretty  or  beautiful  thing  rises  the  ideal 
of  absolute  beauty,  the  manifestation  of  which  is 
recognized  as  one  of  the  great  ends  of  the  universe. 

It  may  thus  be  seen  that  these  impulses  or  in¬ 
stincts  of  which  I  have  spoken  may  exist  under  two 
forms,  or  rather  in  two  somewhat  widely  separated 
stages.  The  first  stage  is  that  of  the  simple,  unrea¬ 
soning,  perhaps  hardly  recognized  impulse.  Such  is 
the  impulse  to  think,  or  the  impulse  to  help  another. 
These  take  their  place  with  other  impulses.  By  ex¬ 
perience  and  thought  they  are  brought  into  conscious¬ 
ness.  They  are  seen  in  their  vastness,  and,  it  may 
be,  in  something  of  their  sublimity.  In  other  words, 
instead  of  a  mere  impulse  to  help  another  in  some 
moment  of  sympathy,  we  have  the  ideal  of  a  life 
of  service.  Instead  of  what  might  be  merely  a  certain 
sense  of  uneasiness  if  one  does  not  perform  some 
act  of  helpfulness,  we  have  the  ideal  of  duty.  So 
also,  if  we  may  use  the  term  ideal  in  a  lower  sense, 
instead  of  this  or  that  impulse  to  self-seeking,  we 
have  the  ideal  of  a  life  of  far-reaching  plans,  all  of 
which  converge  to  the  one  fully  recognized  object  of 
selfish  gain  or  pleasure. 

Between  these  two  extremes,  the  hardly  thought- 
of  impulse  on  the  one  side  and  the  fully  recognized 
universal  and  imperious  ideal  on  the  other,  we  find 
the  place  for  reasoning,  for  conscious  intellectual 
activity.  This  opens  and  smooths  the  path  between 
the  impulse  and  the  ideal.  It  forms,  we  might  say, 
a  broader  or  narrower  belt  between  these  extremes. 
For  the  impulse  one  can  give  no  reason.  For  the 
ideal  one  can  give  no  reason.  It  is  its  own  reason. 
In  the  belt  of  the  intellect  we  have  the  region  of 


22 


ESSAYS 


arguments,  of  reasoning ;  but  the  reasons,  the  ulti¬ 
mate  reasons  upon  which  reasoning  is  based,  are 
found  only  in  the  extremes  within  which  this  belt  of 

j 

the  intellect  is  inclosed.  These,  taken  as  a  whole, 
constitute  reason.  It  is  to  these  that  we  make  our 
ultimate  appeal  when  we  pronounce  our  judgment 
as  to  what  is  reasonable  or  unreasonable.  This  inter¬ 
vening  belt  must  not  be  thought  of  as  though  it 
were  one  of  clear  intellectual  light,  sharply  marked 
off  from  that  which  lies  on  either  side.  It  is  streaked 
through  and  through  by  feeling,  blurred  often  and 
indistinct  ;  yet  on  the  whole  it  performs  well  the 
office  that  I  have  claimed  for  it. 

When  men  insist  that  in  religion  they  will  trust 
to  reason  alone,  they  sometimes  mean  that  they 
will  accept  nothing  that  cannot  be  proved.  More 
often  they  mean  that  they  will  accept  nothing  that 
is  not  in  harmony  with  the  great  ideals  of  the  rea¬ 
son.  These  ideals  are  used  not  merely  negatively, 
not  merely  to  criticise  dogmas  that  are  urged  upon 
belief.  They  are  used  positively.  They  are  made 
the  basis  of  the  largest  faith.  They  rise  above  the 
soul  like  mountain  ranges.  Our  mental  and  spiritual 
life  is  inclosed  by  them.  Mentally  and  spiritually  we 
live  in  a  valley  happy  or  otherwise,  like  that  of  Ras- 
selas.  Not  a  breath  from  the  outer  world  can  reach 
us  that  does  not  blow  across  these  heights  of  reason. 
They  stand  to  us  for  the  outward  world  ;  for  we  can¬ 
not  help  believing  that  they  have  their  basis  also  in 
that.  They  belong  to  the  soul ;  and  yet  we  do  not 
doubt  that  they  are  the  revelation  of  the  true  nature 
of  the  universe.  They  are  the  ideals  of  our  reason ; 
yet  we  cannot  help  believing  that  they  are  also  the 
ideals  of  the  world. 


REASON  IN  RELIGION 


23 


In  a  word,  we  cannot  help  believing  that  the  world 
is  a  reasonable  world.  The  day  laborer,  when  he 
goes  to  his  work  in  the  morning  expecting  to  find 
the  stone  wall  which  he  left  half  finished  the  night 
before  still  standing  as  he  left  it,  shows  that  he 
believes  that  the  world  is  a  reasonable  world.  The 
mathematician,  studying  the  formulas  in  accordance 
with  which  some  mighty  bridge  is  to  be  constructed, 
shows  that  he  believes  that  the  world  is  a  reasonable 
one.  The  man  of  science,  searching  out  the  laws 
which  control  the  movements  of  the  planets,  those 
laws  which  are  the  same  yesterday,  to-day,  and  for¬ 
ever  ;  and  the  philosopher,  searching  out  the  mys¬ 
teries  of  the  universe,  —  these  share  the  same  faith. 

Religion  utters  simply  the  same  great  confidence 
in  the  reasonableness  of  the  world.  The  confidence 
of  Kant  that  what  must  be  done  can  be  done,  and 
the  postulates  which  he  based  upon  this,  show  his 
faith  that  the  world  is  a  reasonable  one.  When 
Browning  says  through  the  lips  of  his  David,  — - 

“  Do  I  find  love  so  full  in  my  nature,  God’s  ultimate  gift, 

That  I  doubt  his  own  love  can  compete  with  it  ?  Here  the  parts 
shift  ? 

Here  the  creature  surpass  the  Creator,  —  the  end  what  Began  ?  ” 

he  appeals  to  the  reasonableness  of  the  world.  That 
the  creature  should  surpass  the  creator  in  the  power 
of  love  would  be  too  unreasonable  to  be  imagined  for 
a  moment.  When  Jesus  says,  “If  ye,  then,  being 
evil,  know  how  to  give  good  gifts  unto  your  chil¬ 
dren,  how  much  more  shall  your  Father  which  is 
in  heaven  give  good  things  to  them  that  ask  him  ?  ” 
he  appeals  to  the  reasonableness  of  the  world.  He 
meets  the  error  which  he  would  refute  by  a  reductio 
ad  absurdum  ;  and  every  reductio  ad  absurdum  de- 


24 


ESSAYS 


rives  its  force  from  the  universal  assumption  of  the 
reasonableness  of  the  world. 

The  difference  between  this  assumption  as  made 
by  religion  and  as  made  in  respect  to  other  relations 
of  life,  is  that  religion  makes  it  with  a  clearer  insight 
into  its  significance.  It  perceives  that  if  the  world 
is  the  embodied  reason,  it  must  be  the  manifestation 
of  reason  ;  that  if  it  be  a  world  in  which  the  ideals 
of  the  spiritual  nature  are  to  be  fulfilled,  it  must 
be  a  world  that  is,  in  its  essence,  not  material,  but 
spiritual. 

When  we  reach  this  point,  that  is,  when  we  begin 
to  take  seriously  this  confidence  in  the  reasonable¬ 
ness  of  the  world,  we  are  met  by  many  an  objec¬ 
tion.  We  are  told  that  there  are  things  in  the  world 
which  contradict  our  reason.  The  world  is  not  such 
an  one  as  we  reasonable  persons  would  have  made 
it.  Things  often  go  at  cross  purposes.  There  are 
difficulties  where  we  would  have  had  ease.  There 
are  sorrows  where  we  would  have  had  joy.  There 
are  failures  where  we  would  have  had  success. 
There  is  sin  where  we  would  have  had  holiness  ; 
hate  where  we  would  have  had  love. 

However  strange  it  may  appear,  it  is  true  that 
out  of  these  very  irrationalities  of  the  universe  the 
special  faith  of  religion,  to  a  large  extent,  took  its 
rise.  It  happened  a  little  oddly,  also,  that  the  first 
method  t.hat  men  took  to  reconcile  their  faith  in  the 
reasonableness  of  the  world  with  the  facts  of  life  was 
to  a  large  extent  directly  opposite  to  that  which 
religion  has  followed  in  these  later  days.  To  the 
savage,  death,  disease,  and  similar  interruptions  of 
the  order  of  life  were  supposed  to  come  by  the  act 
of  some  supernatural  being.  Whether  they  ever 


REASON  IN  RELIGION 


25 


stated  it  or  not  in  this  formal  manner,  the  assumption 
would  seem  to  have  been  that  if  these  supernatural 
powers  would  only  leave  men  in  peace,  then  health 
and  happiness  and  life  itself  might  continue  indefi¬ 
nitely.  So,  too,  the  destruction  that  came  by  tempest 
or  other  convulsion  of  nature  was  the  act  of  these 
supernatural  beings.  The  faith  of  these  simple  peo¬ 
ples  in  the  reasonableness  of  the  world  would  seem  to 
have  been  so  great  that  whatever  of  unreason  they 
found,  or  believed  that  they  found,  was  placed  outside 
the  world  of  ordinary  life  and  ascribed  to  supernatu¬ 
ral,  and,  therefore,  in  a  sense,  unnatural  powers. 

I  have  spoken  of  this  way  of  looking  at  the  matter 
as  though  it  were  peculiar  to  savages.  In  fact,  it 
continued  to  have  its  place  in  the  thoughts  of  men 
who  had  risen  far  above  the  condition  of  the  savage. 
By  many,  plague,  pestilence  and  famine,  disturbances 
of  whatever  kind  in  the  order  of  nature,  have  been 
felt  to  be  in  a  special  sense  signs  of  the  presence 
and  power  of  the  divinity.  It  was  not  merely  that 
in  regard  to  events  which  they  could  not  compre¬ 
hend  men  rested  in  the  faith  that  a  wisdom  greater 
than  their  own  was  controlling  the  course  of  events  ; 
these  things  were,  as  I  have  said,  regarded  as  the 
special  manifestations  of  the  divine  ;  so  that  so  far  as 
science  showed  an  order  in  the  world  it  seemed  to 
leave  no  place  for  religion.  We  read  in  the  story  of 
Elijah  that  “  God  was  not  in  the  earthquake,”  yet  there 
is  where  many  have  thought  that  they  found  Him  in 
some  special  manner.  All  this  was  but  a  survival  of 
the  faith  of  the  barbarian  in  the  rationality  of  the 
world  which  showed  itself  by  placing  whatever  seemed 
irrational  outside  the  world.  Slowly  and  partially  it 
has  given  place  to  that  higher  faith  which  finds  in  the 


26 


ESSAYS 


rationality  of  the  world  the  indication  of  the  absolute 
reason  that  rules  it,  and  which  appeals  to  the  thought 
of  this  higher  reason  to  complement  and  explain  the 
reason  which  is  embodied  in  the  universe.  This 
later  form  of  thought  may  also  say  that  God  is  not  in 
the  earthquake.  That  is,  so  long  as  the  earthquake 
is  not  understood,  so  long  as  it  seems  an  interruption 
of  the  order  of  the  world,  this  higher  form  of  thought 
could  not  see  in  it  the  divine  presence.  It  might 
believe,  but  it  could  not  see.  Only  when  the  earth¬ 
quake  is  understood  to  have  its  place  in  the  orderly 
movement  of  the  world  is  God  found  also  in  that. 

In  all  this  I  have  wished  to  illustrate  the  faith  of 
man  in  the  rationality  of  the  world  and  to  show  how 
these  opposite  forms  of  thought  recognize  it  alike. 
At  first  the  apparent  unreason  of  the  world  is  trans¬ 
ferred  to  that  supernatural  power  which  is  later  seen 
to  be  the  exponent  and  the  source  of  the  rationality 
that  is  in  the  world. 

We  can  thus  understand  something  of  the  nature 
of  the  strife  between  faith  and  reason  which,  as 
we  have  seen,  played  so  large  a  part  in  the  earlier 
church.  The  supernatural  power  that  was  called 
divine  was  to  a  large  extent,  like  the  supernatural 
beings  of  the  earlier  religions,  the  seat  of  unreason. 
It  stood  thus  opposed  to  rationality.  The  difference 
was  that  the  earlier  peoples  sought  to  win  over  these 
supernatural  powers,  to  make  them  reasonable,  so 
that  they  would  no  longer  interfere  with,  and  might 
even  promote,  the  rational  development  of  human 
life  ;  while  in  the  later  period  which  I  have  compared 
with  it,  men  were  called  upon  to  sacrifice  their  rea¬ 
son  itself  to  the  divine  unreason.  Men  have  brought 
many  precious  offerings  to  God,  but  none  more  pre- 


REASON  IN  RELIGION 


2  7 


cious  than  the  sacrifice  of  their  reason  at  what  was 
called  his  shrine.  I  do  not  mean,  of  course,  that 
Christian  worship  was  at  any  time  the  worship 
merely  of  unreason ;  but  so  far  as  the  thought  of 
God  came  into  direct  conflict  with  human  reason, 
so  far  it  obviously  represented  unreason,  enthroned 
and  deified. 

We  thus  see  what  is  the  true  relation  between 
faith  and  reason.  We  see  that  when  the  nature  of 
both  is  understood  there  is  and  can  be  no  strife 
between  them.  So  far  is  faith  from  being  opposed 
to  reason  that  it  finds  its  object  in  reason.  We  do 
not  find  reason  everywhere  manifested  in  the  world. 
There  is  much  that  appears  irrational.  Faith,  so  far 
as  it  is  complete,  affirms  the  absolute  rationality  of 
the  universe.  Where  it  cannot  see,  it  believes.  It 
postulates  whatever  seems  to  it  absolutely  needed, 
in  order  to  represent  to  itself  this  rationality. 

The  assumptions  made  by  religion  are  sometimes 
further  criticised  as  exalting  too  much  the  human 
spirit.  There  is  a  tendency  at  present  to  insist  that 
man  should  humble  himself  in  the  presence  of  the 
outward  world  ;  as  if  a  single  living,  loving,  aspiring 
human  soul  were  not  worth  the  whole  physical  uni¬ 
verse  put  together.  The  older  theologians  used  to 
speak  scornfully  of  the  pride  of  reason.  Something 
like  the  same  reproach  we  hear  to-day,  only  from  the 
opposite  quarter.  Herbert  Spencer,  in  criticising  a 
position  taken  by  Dr.  Martineau,  refers  to  the  well- 
known  story  of  Alfonso  of  Castile,  who  is  reported  to 
have  said  that  if  God  had  consulted  him  he  could 
have  shown  Him  a  better  way  in  which  to  con¬ 
struct  the  world.  Spencer  says  that  this  boast  of 
the  king  was  humble  in  comparison  with  the  claim 


28 


ESSAYS 


made  by  Martineau  to  knowledge  of  the  divine 
method  of  creation.  In  regard  to  the  special  point 
of  difference  between  Spencer  and  Martineau  I  will 
say  nothing.  The  illustration  that  Spencer  uses  is, 
however,  if  I  understand  the  story,  an  unfortunate 
one.  I  suppose  that  what  Alfonso  criticised  was  the 
complicated  system  of  the  universe,  of  cycles  and 
epicycles,  as  taught  by  the  astronomers  of  his  day. 
He  accepted  their  account  as  true,  and  it  struck  him 
as  a  very  awkward  and  complicated  arrangement. 
He  thought  he  could  have  arranged  it  better.  If 
this  is  the  truth  of  the  story,  we  have  here  human 
reason  criticising  the  world  as  it  was  falsely  supposed 
to  be.  The  reason  was  right.  We  have  in  this  an 
example  of  the  triumph  of  reason.  Surely,  if  we  have 
a  right  to  be  proud  of  anything,  it  is  of  our  reason. 
This  has  weighed  the  sun  and  the  stars.  This  has 
revealed  the  past  and  the  future  of  our  world.  This 
has  created  ideals  rising  far  above  whatever  the  out¬ 
ward  world  can  furnish.  If  anything  could  be  the 
type  of  the  power  that  is  working  in  and  through  all 
things,  surely  it  is  this. 

Pride  of  reason  is,  however,  the  last  form  of  speech 
that  I  would  use.  I  would  speak  rather  of  the 
humility  of  reason.  After  all,  we  walk  by  faith. 
The  ideals  of  the  reason  are  but  dimly  seen.  Yet 
our  faith  is  in  them.  We  aspire  towards  them  and 
are  inspired  by  them.  We  have  faith  in  them  as  we 
see  them  manifested  by  the  truest  and  the  best  who 
have  lived  upon  the  world  ;  as  we  see  them  in  some 
degree  confirmed  by  life  and  history,  and  as  they 
offer  themselves,  however  vaguely,  to  our  own  spirit¬ 
ual  vision.  One  may  feel  himself  exalted,  as  Kant 
felt  himself,  above  the  might  and  the  vastness  of 


REASON  IN  RELIGION 


29 


nature  ;  but  one  who  feels  the  power  of  the  ideas 
and  the  ideals  of  the  reason  can  only  humble  himself 
before  them  with  that  form  of  humility  which  alone 
befits  our  nature,  the  humility  of  self-forgetfulness. 
They  are  not  forces  that  we  can  use;  we  must  sub¬ 
mit  to  be  used  by  them.  We  see  error  and  wrong 
abounding  in  the  world  ;  we  see  the  self-seeking,  the 
political  corruption  ;  we  see  the  supremacy  of  things. 
If  we  take  our  place,  as  each  one  should,  among 
those  who  are  striving  to  bring  about  a  purer  thought 
and  a  larger  life,  our  only  ground  of  hope  for  a  final 
victory  is  faith  in  the  essential  reasonableness  of 
man,  the  essential  rationality  of  the  world,  and  in  the 
supreme  Reason  that  rules  the  universe. 


II 


THE  HISTORIC  AND  THE  IDEAL  CHRIST 

It  is  interesting  to  follow  the  changes  in  men’s 
thoughts  in  regard  to  the  person  of  Jesus,  to  see  how 
his  humanity  has  been  taken  up  into  divinity,  to 
watch  the  different  methods  by  which  men  have 
striven  in  their  thought  to  unite  the  two  elements 
that  have  seemed  to  most  so  incongruous  ;  and  then 
to  see  how,  by  a  fuller  recognition  of  his  humanity, 
he  has  been  brought  back  to  earth,  while  men  have 
sought  by  various  theories  to  preserve  for  him  an 
exceptional  position  among  men.  It  is  not  only  in¬ 
teresting  but  important  to  consider  what  truth  may 
underlie  this  idealizing  process,  and  especially  to  ask 
in  what  sense,  if  in  any,  Jesus,  standing  in  the  full 
light  of  history,  must  continue  to  be  regarded  as  the 
ideal  man. 

The  doctrine  of  the  deity  of  Christ  is  doubtless 
held  by  many  to-day  in  the  simple  and  literal  manner 
in  which  it  is  represented  by  the  historic  creeds.  It 
is  not  many  years  since  Professor  Shedd  wrote : 
“The  Logos,  by  his  incarnation  and  exaltation,  mar¬ 
velous  as  it  seems,  took  a  human  nature  with  him  into 
the  depth  of  the  Godhead.  A  finite  glorified  human 
nature  is  now  eternally  united  with  the  second  Trini¬ 
tarian  person,  and  a  God-man  is  now  the  middle  per¬ 
son  of  the  Trinity.”1  I  suppose  that  many  would 

1  Shedd’s  Dogmatic  Theology ,  vol.  ii.  pp.  230  ff. 


HISTORIC  AND  IDEAL  CHRIST 


31 


still  accept  these  words  as  a  statement  of  their  own 
belief.  But  the  history  of  modern  thought  shows 
that  the  doctrine  is  gradually  losing  its  hold  upon  the 
world.  This  is  seen  in  the  origin  and  development 
of  the  Unitarian  and  other  heretical  bodies,  and,  not 
less  clearly,  in  the  changes  which  the  doctrine  is 
undergoing  within  churches  that  consider  themselves 
and  are  generally  considered  to  be  orthodox. 

It  is  not  to  be  expected  that  a  form  of  thought  so 
long  held  as  sacred  would  pass  away  at  once,  leaving 
no  trace  of  its  presence,  and  that  Jesus  after  being 
regarded  as  God  for  centuries  should  quickly  come  to 
be  looked  upon  as  man.  Great  changes  in  human 
thought  rarely  take  place  suddenly.  Both  in  the 
church  considered  orthodox,  and  in  the  bodies  con¬ 
sidered  heretical,  the  change  has  been  and  still  is 
gradual.  He  who  had  been  a  God  still  bore  about 
him  something  of  the  fragrance  of  the  upper  heavens. 
Men  could  not  help  seeing  him  in  the  light  of  his 
previous  exaltation.  Such  influences  have  colored 
men’s  conception  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  in  the  past, 
and  they  color  it  in  many  minds  to-day.  Thus,  we 
find  him  regarded  as  the  absolutely  exceptional  man  ; 
the  supernatural  man  ;  the  sinless  man  ;  the  ideal 
man,  in  the  sense  that  in  him  was  all  possible  perfec¬ 
tion  ;  or  the  divine  man,  in  the  sense  that  in  him,  by 
nature  and  office,  there  was,  in  some  special  and 
supernatural  manner,  the  revelation  of  God  to  men. 
These  views,  sometimes  sharply  defined,  sometimes 
extremely  vague,  have  marked  and  still  mark  the 
transition  in  men’s  thought  of  Jesus. 

Perhaps  as  characteristic  an  example  as  we  can 
find  of  this  phase  of  modern  thought  is  furnished  by 
the  German  theologian  Dorner.  There  is  a  special 


32 


ESSAYS 


interest  for  us  in  his  views,  because  his  system  has 
influenced,  in  a  marked  manner,  certain  forms  of 
theologic  thought  in  our  own  country.  According  to 
Dorner,  the  Logos  was  incarnated  in  Jesus.  The 
Logos  is  the  second  person  of  the  Trinity,  if  the 
term  “person’'  can  be  used  in  relation  to  such  a 
Trinity  as  Dorner  recognizes.  It  is  a  Trinity  which 
has  nothing  in  common  with  that  of  the  creeds.  The 
Trinity,  according  to  Dorner,  is  made  up  of  the  ele¬ 
ments  that  enter  into  the  various  aspects  of  all  com¬ 
plete  spiritual  consciousness.1  Thus,  in  one  of  these 
aspects  the  Father  stands  for  what  we  may  call  the 
“  I  ”  of  the  divine  self-consciousness  ;  the  Son  stands 
for  what  we  may  call  the  “me;”  while  the  Holy 
Spirit  stands  for  the  unity  of  the  two.  That  is,  accord¬ 
ing  to  this  view,  every  one  who  believes  that  God  is 
a  spirit  is  thereby  a  Trinitarian. 

Dorner  illustrates  the  possibility  of  the  mingling 
of  the  divine  with  the  human  in  Jesus  by  certain 
elements  of  human  experience.2  One  of  these  is  the 
presence  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  the  Christian.  This 
higher  life  is  not  present  as  anything  foreign,  that 
can  be  distinguished  from  the  human  life  into  which 
it  enters.  It  has  become  one  with  this  human  life, 
while  at  the  same  time  it  imparts  to  it  a  power  which 
the  human  life  by  itself  could  not  have  shared.  An¬ 
other  example  which  Dorner  gives  to  illustrate  the 
same  truth  is  found  in  the  moral  sense.  The  con¬ 
science  is  the  very  presence  and  power  of  God  in  the 
soul,  yet  the  unity  of  the  life  is  not  broken  up  by  it. 
These  illustrations  seem  to  place  the  relation  of  Jesus 
to  the  Higher  Power  upon  a  level  with  that  of  other 

1  Christliche  Glaubenslehre ,  vol.  i.  pp.  395  ff. 

2  Ibid .  vol.  ii.  p.  420. 


HISTORIC  AND  IDEAL  CHRIST 


33 


men.  We  might  even  think  that  there  was  no  dif¬ 
ference  of  kind,  but  simply  one  of  degree.  So  to 
conceive  his  thought,  however,  would  be  to  misunder¬ 
stand  Dorner,  though  there  is  such  vagueness  in  his 
statement  that  I  am  unable  to  say  wherein  the  differ¬ 
ence  consists.  This  vagueness  arises  in  part  from 
the  fact  that,  according  to  his  statement,  the  Word 
which  in  Jesus  was  made  flesh  has  no  separate  per¬ 
sonality  or  consciousness.  It  is  simply  the  objective 
side  of  the  divine  consciousness. 

While  the  view  of  Dorner  may  be  taken  as  an  illus¬ 
tration  of  the  manner  in  which  the  doctrine  of  the 
deity  of  Christ  may  be  retained  in  form  while  its 
substance  has  been  lost,  that  of  Schleiermacher  may 
represent  another  type  of  thought  which  has  been 
not  uncommon  since  his  day.  According  to  him 
Christ  was  a  new  and  higher  creation,  who  was  the 
introducer  of  a  new  life  upon  the  earth.  He  was  the 
supernatural  man.1 

I  notice  these  two  forms  of  thought  to  illustrate 
the  fact  that  the  phases  of  belief  which  they  repre¬ 
sent  are  absolutely  without  Scriptural  authority.  If 
we  assume,  as  the  church  has  done,  that  the  teaching 
of  the  New  Testament  is  perfectly  uniform  in  regard 
to  this  matter,  we  must  take  its  highest  and  most 
definite  statements  to  represent  this  teaching. 

In  the  Epistles  ascribed  to  Paul  we  have  very  clear 
and  definite  utterances.  Christ  was  consciously  pre¬ 
existent.  He  dwelt  in  the  glory  of  God,  exalted 
above  all  others  save  God.  His  subordination  to 
God  is  often  recognized,  but,  except  for  this,  there  is 
no  limit  to  his  power  and  glory.  A  single  example 
will  suffice.  In  the  Epistle  to  the  Philippians  we 

1  Christliche  Glaube ,  vol.  ii.  pp.  34  ff. 


34 


ESSAYS 


read  of  Christ  :  “  Who,  being  in  the  form  of  God, 
counted  it  not  a  prize  to  be  on  an  equality  with  God, 
but  emptied  himself,  taking  the  form  of  a  servant, 
being  made  in  the  likeness  of  men.”  1  Here  we  have 
something  extremely  definite.  The  passage  declares 
a  personal  preexistence  in  glory,  and  a  conscious  and 
voluntary  surrender  of  this  glory,  in  order  to  enter 
upon  the  earthly  life.  If  the  Bible  is  an  infallible  and 
divine  authority,  its  statements  must  be  accepted  just 
as  they  stand.  It  will  not  do  to  go  beyond  them,  or 
to  fall  short  of  them.  It  will  not  do  to  say  :  “  Be¬ 
cause  the  Bible  says  he  is  exalted  in  one  way,  there¬ 
fore  we  will  say  that  he  is  exalted  in  another  way.” 
It  will  not  do  to  say,  “Because  the  New  Testament 
places  him  so  near  to  God,  we  will  make  him  the 
equal  of  God  ;  we  will  make  him  very  God.”  Whether 
we  go  beyond  the  statements  of  the  New  Testament 
or  fall  short  of  them,  we  equally  lose  its  authority ;  if 
there  is  any  reason  for  accepting  such  statements  as 
authoritative,  they  must  be  taken  just  as  they  stand. 
We  have  no  right  to  pick  and  to  choose,  to  say  we 
will  accept  this,  and  reject  that.  We  have  no  right 
to  soften  down  a  declaration  that  seems  to  us  too 
strong,  or  to  reduce  a  clear  statement  of  an  individual 
fact  to  a  hazy  abstraction. 

Vague  notions  in  regard  to  the  divinity  of  Christ, 
like  that  quoted  from  Dorner,  which  are  more  or  less 
prevalent  at  the  present  day,  and  other  notions  in 
regard  to  his  exceptional  humanity,  which  reproduce 
something  like  the  thought  of  Schleiermacher,  have 
a  certain  air  of  orthodoxy  or  semi-orthodoxy  ;  but  they 
have  no  more  Biblical  authority  behind  them  than 
the  barest  humanitarianism. 


1  Philippians  ii.  6,  7. 


HISTORIC  AND  IDEAL  CHRIST 


35 


It  may  be  said  that  beside  the  authority  of  the 
Bible  there  is  the  authority  of  the  church  ;  that  in 
the  church  we  have  a  progressive  development  of 
doctrine.  This  may  be  and  doubtless  is  true ;  but 
obviously  this  assumption  cannot  be  used  to  sustain 
any  particular  view  that  may  be  held  at  any  one  time 
by  any  portion  of  the  church,  or  even  by  the  whole 
church.  The  history  of  the  church  is  not  yet  com¬ 
plete.  Who  can  say  what  its  final  utterance  will  be  ? 
It  is  an  interesting  and  important  fact,  however,  that 
in  the  deification  of  Jesus,  and  in  the  modifications 
which  the  dogma  of  his  divinity  has  undergone  in 
its  gradual  relaxation,  we  have  simply  an  example  of 
doctrinal  development.  The  doctrine  was  developed 
as  an  organism  grows,  and  it  is  disintegrating  as  an 
organism  disintegrates  when  it  has  passed  its  prime. 
In  other  words,  the  minds  of  men  pass  from  one  form 
of  thought,  which  has  been  held  earnestly,  to  another 
and  radically  different  form  of  thought,  very  gradu¬ 
ally.  They  tend  to  cling  to  the  old  as  long  as  pos¬ 
sible,  and  often  they  do  not  realize  how  the  substance 
of  the  thought  has  been  so  transformed  that  its  sig¬ 
nificance  has  been  thoroughly  changed. 

In  the  dogma  that  we  are  considering  there  is  a 
special  motive  at  work  to  retard  the  transformation 
of  belief.  Jesus  has  stood  as  the  central  figure  in 
history.  He  has  been  the  object  of  love  and  rever¬ 
ence,  even  of  adoration.  Men  have  feared  to  let  go 
the  idea  of  some  special  supernatural  and  superhuman 
element  in  his  nature  and  personality,  lest  his  pre¬ 
eminence  and  his  influence  should  be  lost,  undistin- 
guishable  among  the  manifold  factors  that  enter  into 
our  modern  life  and  our  civilization.  They  have 
feared  to  leave  him  to  take  his  chances  in  what  may 


36 


ESSAYS 


be  called  the  historical  struggle  for  existence.  Yet 
whatever  supernatural  elements  may  or  may  not  be 
recognized  in  his  life,  to  this  we  must  come  at  last. 
The  historical  struggle  for  existence  is  as  pitiless  as 
that  which  has  been  going  on  in  the  natural  world. 
Even  man,  the  favorite  child  of  nature  and  of  Provi¬ 
dence,  cast  apparently  defenseless  among  the  rude 
forces,  animate  and  inanimate,  that  rule  the  world, 
would  not  have  endured,  had  he  not  possessed  cer¬ 
tain  powers  of  advantage  in  the  great  struggle.  The 
Providence  that  preserved  him  was  shown,  not  in 
surrounding  him  with  safeguards,  but  in  equipping 
him  with  those  finer  weapons  by  using  which  he 
triumphed  over  the  elemental  and  brute  forces  of  his 
environment.  If,  then,  Jesus  is  to  be  recognized  as 
the  leader  of  the  higher  life  of  the  world,  the  recog¬ 
nition  cannot  rest  upon  any  theories  of  his  office  or 
of  his  person.  He  must  hold  the  leadership  simply 
because  he  leads. 

We  must  here  look  upon  the  work  of  Jesus  from 
the  hither  side.  We  can  raise  no  question  as  to  the 
divine  plan  or  the  councils  of  eternity.  If  we  recog¬ 
nize  a  divine  plan  at  all,  this  recognition  can  only 
rest  upon  what  we  find  in  the  divine  accomplishment. 
When,  with  this  purpose  in  our  minds,  we  look  at  the 
actual  life  of  Jesus,  we  are  at  first  baffled  and  disap¬ 
pointed.  The  story  of  his  life,  save  in  certain  salient 
points,  appears  confused,  if  not  contradictory.  The 
Gospels  were  written  long  enough  after  the  events 
which  they  describe  to  admit  of  forgetfulness,  and  of 
the  growth  of  myths  that  obscure  and  distort  the 
original  facts.  More  confusing  still,  the  thought  of 
this  later  time  to  some  extent  necessarily  blends 
itself  with  the  thought  of  Jesus  or  takes  the  place 


HISTORIC  AND  IDEAL  CHRIST 


37 


of  it.  The  geologist  can  distinguish  at  a  glance  the 
vein  of  trap  rock  which  cuts  through  the  solid  mass 
into  which  it  has  found  its  way ;  but  who  shall  dis¬ 
tinguish  with  equal  accuracy  the  later  thought  that 
has  been  infiltrated  into  the  discourses  of  Jesus  ? 

As  an  example  of  the  difficulty  of  reaching  definite 
conclusions  as  to  some  of  the  fundamental  facts  in 
the  history  of  Jesus,  we  may  refer  to  a  discussion 
that  has  recently  interested  many  students  of  the 
New  Testament.  In  his  work  entitled  “The  Seat  of 
Authority  in  Religion  ”  Dr.  Martineau  maintains  that 
Jesus  did  not  himself  claim  to  be  the  Christ,  but 
that  this  office  was  first  ascribed  to  him  after  his 
death.  He  bases  his  argument  chiefly  upon  a  con¬ 
versation  of  Jesus  with  his  disciples  that  occurred 
during  the  journey  to  Jerusalem.1  Jesus  asked  his 
disciples,  “  Who  do  men  say  that  I  am  ?  And  they 
told  him,  saying,  John  the  Baptist  ;  and  others,  Eli¬ 
jah  ;  but  others,  One  of  the  prophets.  And  he  asked 
them,  But  who  say  ye  that  I  am  ?  Peter  answereth 
and  saith  unto  him,  Thou  art  the  Christ.  And  he 
charged  them  that  they  should  tell  no  man  of  him.”  2 
Dr.  Martineau  assumes  that  Jesus  here  denies  that 
he  is  the  Messiah.  In  this  he  seems  to  me  to  force 
the  words.  The  passage  does  take  for  granted  that 
the  Messiah  ship  had  not  before  been  claimed  by 
Jesus;  and  it  suggests  a  reason  why  his  claim  was 
not  known  afterwards  during  his  life.  It  seems  to 
imply  that  while  he  lived  Jesus  was  not  recognized  as 
the  Christ.  If,  however,  we  take  this  and  other  pas¬ 
sages  that  might  be  associated  with  it  as  our  starting- 
point,  we  are  met  by  many  others  that  describe  him 

1  The  Seat  of  Authority  in  Religion ,  pp.  349  ff. 

2  Mark  viii.  27  ff. 


38 


ESSAYS 


as  taking  openly  upon  himself  the  Messiah’s  office. 
I  refer  to  this  discussion,  not  to  take  one  side  or  the 
other,  but  simply  to  illustrate  the  kind  of  difficulties 
that  we  meet  when  we  try  to  form  a  clear  picture  of 
the  life  and  work  of  Jesus.  We  have  to  adopt  some 
principle  according  to  which  we  shall  emphasize  one 
or  another  class  of  statements  as  most  to  be  relied 
upon,  or  as  most  characteristic.  Here  is  obviously 
much  room  for  caprice ;  the  most  careful  judgment 
and  the  keenest  historic  sense  are  needed. 

When  we  turn  from  the  attempt  to  construct  the 
story  of  Jesus,  and  seek  to  comprehend  something  of 
his  character  and  personality,  we  meet  somewhat  of 
the  same  difficulty,  but  in  a  far  less  degree.  The 
personality  of  Jesus  stands  out  with  a  distinctness 
that  is  not  surpassed  in  the  case  of  any  of  the  heroes 
of  antiquity.  Despite  the  myths  and  the  arbitrary 
reconstructions  by  which  the  narrative  is  marred,  it 
is  impossible  to  mistake  the  character  of  the  central 
person.  We  find  the  same  image  stamped  upon  the 
work  and  the  ideals  of  his  followers.  The  church 
to-day,  however  imperfectly,  reproduces  the  image  of 
its  founder.  If  criticism  of  the  New  Testament  story 
should  be  far  more  destructive  than  it  is,  if  the  whole 
narrative  should  be  resolved  into  the  mist  of  a  later 
mythology,  even  this  would  reflect,  in  glowing  colors, 
the  real  image  and  the  strong  personality  of  Jesus. 

We  see  in  him  a  man  in  whom  mysticism  and  prac¬ 
ticality  were  united  in  a  wonderful  degree.  His  con¬ 
sciousness  of  God,  from  certain  points  of  view,  seems 
to  be  the  one  supreme  factor  in  his  life.  It  shows 
itself  under  all  circumstances.  Whatever  may  be 
the  subject  on  which  he  speaks,  this  thought  of  the 
ever-present  God  mingles  in  the  discourse.  We  do 


HISTORIC  AND  IDEAL  CHRIST 


39 


not  need  the  stories  of  the  nights  of  prayer  and  of 
lonely  struggle  to  teach  us  how  he  lived  in  this 
divine  companionship,  though  these  confirm  and 
complete  the  impression  of  this  aspect  of  his  life. 
Sometimes  this  consciousness  of  God  takes  form  in 
the  glad  sense  of  fellowship.  Sometimes  he  finds  in 
God  the  ideal  of  human  living.  Sometimes  he  bows 
before  his  unapproachable  perfection.  Under  one 
form  or  another,  the  thought  of  God  seems  always 
present  to  him.  When  we  turn  to  his  life  among  men, 
his  care  and  his  loving  sympathy  for  them  seem  to  be 
each  in  turn  the  supreme  power  that  manifested  it¬ 
self  in  him.  His  days  were  passed  in  ministering  to 
their  needs.  While  he  shrank  from  being  known  as 
a  wonder-worker,  the  strange  healing  power  that  he 
possessed  was  always  at  the  service  of  those  who 
needed  his  help.  The  spiritual  needs  of  men  moved 
him,  however,  more  deeply  than  their  physical  suffer¬ 
ings.  To  him  a  blind  and  halting  spirit  was  far  more 
pitiful  than  a  blind  and  halting  body.  He  did  not 
underrate,  as  his  followers  have  sometimes  done,  the 
importance  of  ministering  to  the  physical  needs  of 
those  about  him.  Then,  as  we  have  seen,  he  never 
failed  to  help,  so  far  as  in  him  lay.  But  his  great  en¬ 
thusiasm  went  to  the  quickening  of  the  spiritual  life 
of  men.  He  would  take  them  up  into  that  fair  world 
of  aspiration  and  peace,  of  purity  and  love,  in  which 
he  perpetually  dwelt.  He  would  make  them  share 
that  divine  companionship  which  was  the  strength 
and  the  joy  of  his  own  life. 

In  Jesus  we  also  find  blended  in  a  union  no  less 
rare  the  elements  of  conservatism  and  reform.  His 
keen  vision  distinguished  accurately  between  the 
abuses  that  had  gathered  about  the  fundamental 


40 


ESSAYS 


principles  of  the  national  constitution  and  these 
principles  themselves  ;  between  the  pettiness  of  ob¬ 
servance  that  sank  into  triviality,  and  the  service 
which  the  law  itself  demanded.  Perhaps  nothing  is 
more  marked  in  his  character  than  his  power  of  see¬ 
ing  things  in  their  true  perspective,  of  distinguishing 
between  the  great  and  the  small.  The  saying,  “  This 
ought  ye  to  have  done  and  not  to  have  left  the  other 
undone/’  illustrates  the  spirit  which  controlled  his 
teaching  and  the  habits  of  his  life.  Thus  he  reared 
within  the  Jewish  law  a  moral  and  religious  structure 
so  complete  that  it  stood  undisturbed  and  fair  when 
that  law  fell  away. 

Another  of  these  harmoniously  blended  contrasts 
in  the  spirit  of  Jesus  we  find  in  the  manner  in  which 
he  looked  upon  different  classes  of  sins.  Nowhere 
does  his  sense  of  ethical  perspective  show  itself  more 
clearly.  The  sins  that  spring  from  impulse,  and 
from  human  weakness,  that  have  their  roots  in  some¬ 
thing  not  wholly  bad,  and  are  fostered  by  the  needs 
of  the  individual  and  by  the  customs  of  society,  the 
sins,  at  the  same  time,  that  the  world  most  affects  to 
despise,  — to  these  he  was  unspeakably  tender.  He 
strove  to  uplift  the  fallen,  to  encourage  those  whose 
hearts  had  failed,  to  lighten  by  the  smile  of  sympathy 
the  path  of  those  who  moved  in  the  shadow  of  the 
world’s  scorn.  At  the  same  time,  there  was  nothing 
weak  in  this  sympathy.  It  held  up  the  ideal  of  a 
purer  and  better  life  that  was  still  in  the  power  of 
the  sinner.  On  the  other  hand,  for  spiritual  pride, 
for  the  spirit  of  those  who,  unconscious  of  their  own 
sins,  looked  down  in  scorn  upon  their  fellows,  he  had 
no  sympathy.  He  seemed  to  feel  that  their  spirit  of 
self-righteousness  crushed  out  all  faith  in  the  true 


HISTORIC  AND  IDEAL  CHRIST 


41 


life  and  all  power  to  attain  it.  While  for  the  outcasts 
of  the  world  he  knew  there  was  no  hope  save  in  en¬ 
couragement,  for  those  who  were  filled  with  spiritual 
exaltation,  whose  sins  disturbed  neither  their  satis¬ 
faction  with  themselves,  nor  the  world’s  satisfaction 
with  them,  he  saw  that  there  was  no  hope  save  in 
humiliation.  I  have  little  sympathy  with  those  who 
find  something  foreign  to  the  spirit  of  Jesus  in  the 
denunciations  which  he  hurled  at  the  self-righteous 
oppressors  of  the  lowly  whom  he  would  exalt.  I  am 
a  little  suspicious  even  of  the  sadly  modulated  tones 
in  which,  according  to  the  familiar  story,  Channing 
rendered  these  words  in  order  to  remove  the  misgiv¬ 
ings  of  a  person  who  seems  to  have  learned  to  know 
only  one  side  of  the  completeness  of  the  Master. 
The  Christ  whom  the  painters  for  the  most  part  give 
us  could  not  have  uttered  these  words.  They  cannot 
give  the  whole  ;  so  they  take  the  fairest  and  the  gen¬ 
tlest  part.  But  Jesus  united  the  tenderness  of  the 
sweetest  psalmist  with  the  sternness  of  the  prophet 
who  fearlessly  denounced  the  wickedness  of  his  time. 
While  he  rebuked  with  righteous  indignation  those 
who  oppressed  the  lowly  whom  he  loved,  he  met 
insult  and  cruelty  directed  towards  himself  with  sub¬ 
lime  patience  and  divine  forgiveness. 

When  the  “ideal  Christ  ”  is  spoken  of  in  contrast 
with  the  “historic  Christ,”  the  thought  sometimes 
suggested  by  the  comparison  is  that  the  ideal  Christ 
has  been  formed  by  gradual  accretion  ;  that  the  his¬ 
toric  figure  has  been  overlaid  by  the  ideals  of  later 
generations.  Thus  it  is  assumed  that  Christ  seems 
always  in  advance  of  the  world  simply  because  he  is 
clothed  upon  by  the  unattained  ideal  of  every  age.  I 
should  not  dare  to  affirm  that  this  element  has  been 


42 


ESSAYS 


wholly  absent  from  the  relation  of  Jesus  to  the  world. 
The  idealizing  process,  however,  has  been  on  the 
whole  rather  one  of  abstraction  than  of  accretion. 
The  personality  of  Jesus  has  first  been  abstracted 
from  its  special  environment.  This  separation  has 
been,  for  the  reasons  already  indicated,  comparatively 
easy.  The  fact  that  we  know  so  little  of  his  definite 
plans  and  of  the  special  significance  of  his  work 
makes  it  easy  to  leave  these  to  a  great  extent  out  of 
account.  Indeed,  the  fact  that  while  the  personality 
of  Jesus  is  marked  so  distinctly,  his  more  direct  rela¬ 
tion  to  the  circumstances  of  his  time  is  left  so  vague 
seems  to  make  the  separation  of  the  two  unavoidable. 
Thus  it  has  been  possible  for  the  life  of  Jesus  to 
become  an  ideal  fit  to  be  applied  to  the  circumstances 
of  every  life,  however  unlike  these  circumstances  may 
be  to  those  in  which  he  moved. 

The  second  step  in  the  process  of  abstraction  has 
been  to  separate  the  traits  in  the  picture  of  Jesus 
which  unite  to  form  a  harmonious  whole  from  those 
which  can  with  difficulty  be  associated  with  them. 
This,  again,  for  the  most  part  has  not  been  done 
artificially,  with  a  set  purpose  ;  it  has  been  rather 
a  process  that  accomplished  itself.  In  a  composite 
photograph  only  those  elements  that  are  more  or  less 
harmonious  leave  any  impression  upon  the  plate  ;  that 
which  is  merely  individual  is  unrecorded  ;  so  in  the 
various  representations  of  Jesus  that  are  given  in  the 
Gospels,  only  the  great  mass  of  harmonious  traits 
have  impressed  themselves  upon  men’s  hearts  and 
memories ;  the  few  scattered  details  that  do  not  con¬ 
form  to  these  have  been  for  the  most  part  disregarded. 
Such  foreign  elements  are  found,  for  instance,  in  the 
story  of  the  cursing  of  the  fig-tree  because  it  failed 


HISTORIC  AND  IDEAL  CHRIST 


43 


to  produce  fruit  out  of  its  season ;  this  perhaps  was 
a  parable  hardened  into  a  myth.  Such  also  are  some 
of  the  harsh  and  paradoxical  sayings  reported  in  the 
Fourth  Gospel. 

It  is  by  such  a  process  of  abstraction,  I  conceive, 
that  the  ideal  Jesus  has  been  formed.  I  am  not 
aware  that  any  element  of  character  attributed  to 
this  ideal  is  without  a  suggestion  in  the  actual  story. 
But  the  next  stage  in  the  process  has  been  the  ab¬ 
straction  of  the  few  lofty  moments  of  his  life  that 
are  pictured  for  us,  from  his  life  as  a  whole,  in  affir¬ 
mation  of  his  absolute  sinlessness  either  as  man  or  as 
God.  This  certainly  adds  something  to  his  nature ; 
it  adds  nothing  to  his  character  as  it  is  represented 
to  us.  It  throws  a  more  intense  light  upon  it ;  and 
this  very  light  tends  to  blind  us  to  some  of  its  more 
delicate  nuances .  Thus  it  detracts  from  the  perfec¬ 
tion  of  the  picture  instead  of  completing  it. 

There  is  in  the  Mahabharata  a  beautiful  story  of 
the  marriage  of  Nala  and  Damayantf.  Damayantf 
was  a  beautiful  maiden  who  had  given  her  heart  to 
Nala,  by  whom  she  was  tenderly  loved.  According  to 
a  custom  of  the  time  there  was  a  gathering  of  heroes 
from  among  whom  Damayantf  was  to  select  a  hus¬ 
band.  She  cast  her  eyes  over  the  assembly  in  search 
of  him  whom  her  heart  had  already  chosen  ;  but  to 
her  dismay  there  were  five  Nalas.  Four  divinities 
also  loved  her  ;  and,  knowing  her  love  for  Nala,  each 
had  assumed  his  form,  hoping  thus  to  be  selected  by 
the  maiden.  She  prayed  them  sweetly  to  resume 
their  proper  form  that  she  might  distinguish  the 
object  of  her  love.  They  granted  her  request,  and 
stood  before  her  in  their  full  divinity.  “  Their  feet 
did  not  touch  the  earth,  their  eyes  winked  not,  their 


44 


ESSAYS 


garlands  were  as  fresh  as  if  newly  gathered,  and  not 
a  stain  of  dust  lay  on  their  raiment  nor  a  drop  of 
perspiration  upon  their  brows.”  “And  Damayantf 
saw  also  the  true  Nala,  for  he  stood  before  her  with 
shadow  falling  to  the  ground,  and  twinkling  eyes,  and 
drooping  garland,  and  moisture  was  on  his  brow,  and 
dust  upon  his  raiment.”  1  Such  were  the  marks  of 
his  humanity,  and  with  them  he  was  dearer  to  her 
than  the  immaculate  gods.  In  like  manner,  may  not 
a  human  Jesus  be  nearer  to  the  hearts  of  men  than 
one  separated  from  them  by  a  supernatural  impecca¬ 
bility  ? 

The  theoretical  question  whether  Jesus  was  or  was 
not  absolutely  without  sin  does  not  much  concern 
us.  The  important  thing  is  to  decide  whether  the 
spirit  and  the  life  of  Jesus,  as  we  know  them,  furnish 
an  ideal  which  we  may  use  for  the  shaping  of  our 
lives.  When  we  take  a  rule  by  which  to  draw  a  line, 
we  do  not  ask  whether  under  a  microscope  it  would 
still  show  an  unbroken  edge.  We  ask  simply  if  it 
can  be  safely  used.  In  the  case  of  Jesus  we  have  no 
microscope  that  we  could  use,  even  if  we  would.  We 
have  only  glimpses  at  certain  grand  moments  of  his 
life.  If  we  must  pronounce  upon  his  sinlessness,  we 
have  to  base  our  judgment  upon  a  priori  considera¬ 
tions,  resting  on  theological  or  metaphysical  theories. 
It  is  far  better  to  forget  the  speculations  and  the 
strife  of  the  schools,  and  receive  what  guidance  and 
inspiration  we  may  from  the  personality  of  Jesus  as 
it  stands  in  living  reality  before  us. 

Let  it  be  admitted  that  Jesus  may  be  an  ideal  after 
which  we  can  shape  our  lives.  Does  it  follow,  it 
may  be  asked,  that  he  is  the  ideal  ?  What  becomes 

1  Wheeler’s  History  of  India,  vol.  i.  p.  434. 


HISTORIC  AND  IDEAL  CHRIST 


45 


of  the  central  position  that  he  has  held  ?  Why  may  not 
the  world  find  others  who  shall  as  well,  if  not  better, 
inspire  men’s  lives  ?  To  these  questions  it  may  be 
answered  that  so  long  as  the  teachings  of  Jesus  are 
recognized  as  embodying  the  loftiest  truth,  so  long 
will  his  personality  be  regarded  as  the  embodiment 
of  this  truth.  This  is  the  final  stage  in  the  process 
of  idealization  and  generalization  which  we  are  con¬ 
templating.  By  this  relation  to  the  universal  truth 
that  was  manifested  through  it  the  life  of  Jesus  will 
be  taken  out  of  its  individuality,  and  made  also  uni¬ 
versal.  So  long  as  his  teaching  holds  the  centra] 
place  in  our  higher  thought,  so  long  will  his  person¬ 
ality  hold  the  central  place  as  the  ideal  of  life.  It  is 
necessary,  then,  to  consider  the  teaching  of  Jesus, 
that  we  may  judge  as  to  the  duration  and  extent  of 
his  personal  influence. 

In  regard  to  this  teaching,  two  questions  suggest 
themselves.  One  is,  What  does  the  world  owe  to  it  ? 
The  other  is,  What  do  we  owe  to  it  ?  I  believe  that 
the  answer  to  these  questions  is  the  same,  that  our 
,  indebtedness  is  also  the  world’s  indebtedness.  To 
speak  of  the  world’s  indebtedness  would,  however, 
demand  a  study  of  the  utterances  of  the  great  leaders 
of  the  world’s  thought,  and  a  comparison  of  them 
with  the  teaching  of  Jesus,  for  which  we  have  here 
no  space.  I  wish  to  present  certain  considerations 
in  illustration  of  our  indebtedness  to  him.  After  all, 
this  is  what  chiefly  concerns  us.  A  boy’s  mother  is, 
and  will  ever  remain,  his  mother.  Though  he  finds, 
as  he  goes  out  into  the  world,  that  there  are  other 
women  as  wise  and  good,  they  can  never  be  to  him 
what  she  is.  Even  if  it  should  appear  that  other 
races  owe  to  their  teachers  as  much  as  we  owe  to 


46 


ESSAYS 


Jesus,  he  will  still  remain  the  source  of  our  best 
life. 

When  we  sum  up  the  teaching  of  Jesus  in  a 
formula,  it  seems,  we  must  admit,  somewhat  com¬ 
monplace.  He  spoke  of  God  as  the  loving  Father  ; 
of  religion  as  an  answering  love,  which  strives  to 
shape  the  life  into  conformity  with  the  divine  ideal ; 
of  duty  as  being  fulfilled  in  love.  In  his  teaching, 
religion  and  morality  were  so  interfused,  they  had 
become  so  indissolubly  blended  into  one,  that  they 
cannot  be  severed  even  in  our  thought.  Men  some¬ 
times  speak  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  as  if  it  were 
merely  a  system  of  ethics.  Every  word  is  transfig¬ 
ured  by  religious  faith  ;  every  word  is  luminous  with 
the  thought  of  God.  These  ideas  seem  common¬ 
place,  but  it  is  partly  because  they  are  so  often 
repeated ;  yet  chiefly  because  this  repetition  has  often 
so  little  meaning  for  the  life.  With  Jesus  himself 
these  truths  were  not  commonplace.  They  were  as 
if  fresh  minted  and  unsullied  by  careless  handling 
among  men.  They  came  into  the  world  as  powers 
both  of  destruction  and  of  accomplishment.  They 
were  the  most  revolutionary  thoughts  ever  uttered. 
The  living  of  them  brought  Jesus  to  the  cross.  How¬ 
ever  imperfectly  recognized,  they  have  been  slowly 
transforming  the  world  ever  since. 

Yet  when  we  look  at  them  more  closely,  do  not 
the  teachings  of  Jesus  seem  thin  and  abstract  beside 
the  fullness  and  sweep  of  modern  thought  and  life  ? 
Has  not  the  world  developed  a  religion  and  a  moral¬ 
ity  more  complex  and  many-sided  than  those  which 
Jesus  taught  ?  Take,  for  instance,  the  general 
matter  of  religion.  He  spoke,  as  we  know,  of  the 
loving  Father.  Have  we  not  learned  to  know  God 


HISTORIC  AND  IDEAL  CHRIST 


47 


as  something  more  vast  than  this  ?  Have  we  not 
learned  to  know  Him  as  manifested  in  the  perfect 
order  of  the  Universe,  in  the  sublime  and  inflexible 
law  which  holds  the  dust  of  our  streets  and  star  dust 
and  human  souls  alike  in  its  grasp  ?  Does  not 
religion  demand  a  recognition  of  this  truth  also,  and 
must  it  not  shape  itself  to  its  demands  ?  Does  the 
thought  of  Jesus  in  truth  furnish  more  than  one 
factor  in  that  greater  and  more  complex  whole 
which  we  call  religion  to-day  ?  Have  we  any  right 
to  call  this  greater  and  more  complex  whole  by  his 
name  ? 

Yet  in  this  greater  whole  the  thought  of  Jesus 
forms  the  only  element  that  can  be  called  religious. 
In  a  world  of  mere  law,  could  there  be  anything  like 
what  we  know  as  religion  ?  There  might  be  awe 
before  the  stupendous  forces  of  Nature,  and  a  deeper 
awe  before  the  law  by  which  each  of  these  is  kept 
within  its  appointed  bounds.  There  might  be  sub¬ 
mission  to  the  inevitable.  There  might  be  peace  in 
the  thought  that  these  laws  are  working  out,  on  the 
whole,  more  good  than  evil ;  and  one  might  be  willing 
that  his  little  bark  should  be  wrecked  by  a  wind  that, 
in  the  end,  brings  good  to  man.  But  would  all  this 
be  what  we  call  religion  ?  Does  not  religion  imply 
the  communion  of  spirit  with  spirit  ?  Does  it  not 
demand  to  see  love  working  in  and  through  the  law  ? 
What  Jesus  taught  was,  then,  the  essence  of  religion. 

The  revelations  of  our  modern  science  open  a  world 
of  which  religion,  if  it  would  continue  to  exist,  must 
take  possession,  and  which  it  must  transform  into  it¬ 
self.  So  far  as  men  can  see  or  can  believe  that  law  is 
a  manifestation  of  love,  so  far  is  religion  possible.  If 
the  teaching  of  Jesus  seems  abstract,  it  is  because  it 


48 


ESSAYS 


is  the  form  into  which  the  whole  life  and  experience 
of  the  world  were  to  be  taken  up.  This  conquering 
and  transforming  of  the  world  of  law  by  the  power 
of  religion  was  not  left  by  Jesus  for  the  future  to 
accomplish.  Men  sometimes  fancy  that  he  saw  in 
God  only  a  weak  tenderness  that  granted  its  request 
to  every  cry.  But  in  his  moment  of  fiercest  agony 
he  cried,  “  Father,  if  it  be  possible,  let  this  cup  pass 
from  me  ;  nevertheless  not  as  I  will,  but  as  Thou 
wilt.”  “  If  it  be  possible.”  He  felt  the  terrible  might 
of  some  necessity,  in  the  divine  plan,  or  of  it,  that 
might  make  the  granting  of  his  prayer  impossible ; 
but  he  submitted  his  will  to  it,  because  he  knew  that 
in  it  and  through  it  a  wise  love  was  working. 

Such  was  the  relation  of  the  spirit  of  filial  trust  in 
JesuS’  to  the  might  of  the  law  by  which  he  felt  himself 
encompassed.  Such  is  the  relation  of  religion  to  the 
laws  of  the  universe  now.  Never  did  the  world  of 
material  forces  and  inexorable  law  open  to  the  thought 
of  man  in  such  vast  complexity  and  order  as  to-day. 
This,  however,  furnishes  no  new  element  to  religion. 
Submission  to  irresistible  force  is  not  in  itself  religious, 
even  though  this  force  be  the  manifestation  of  an 
order  too  sublime  for  our  thought  or  our  imagination 
wholly  to  grasp.  Religion  shows  itself  in  a  faith  by 
which  this  world  of  law  is  transfigured  ;  by  which  it 
is  felt  to  be  the  expression  of  a  presence  and  a  power 
to  which  the  spirit  may  trust  itself  and  all  things  ;  to 
which  it  may  trust  farther  than  it  can  see  or  compre¬ 
hend. 

What  is  true  of  religion  is  true  also  of  morality. 
Here,  also,  the  world  may  seem  to  have  advanced  far 
beyond  the  simple  teaching  of  Jesus.  “Give  to  him 
that  asketh  thee,”  he  said,  “  and  from  him  that 


HISTORIC  AND  IDEAL  CHRIST 


49 


would  borrow  of  thee  turn  not  thou  away.”  This 
sounds  superficial  and  old-fashioned  to  many  ears  to¬ 
day.  We  have  to-day  the  science  of  political  eco¬ 
nomy,  a  science  extremely  imperfect  as  yet,  indeed, 
but  still  developed  enough  to  change  many  of  the 
forms  of  helpfulness.  This  science  was  not  studied 
in  Judea,  although  Paul  anticipated  its  fundamental 
principle  when  he  explained,  “  If  a  man  will  not 
work,  neither  let  him  eat.”  We  sometimes  think 
that  with  this  science  of  political  economy  there  has 
originated  a  wholly  new  kind  of  charity ;  and  we 
look  back  with  a  certain  contempt  on  the  charity  that 
incited  to  promiscuous  almsgiving. 

But  charity  was  always  the  same  divine  power  that 
it  is  to-day.  Charity  has  not  changed  its  nature.  It 
moves  a  little  awkwardly,  it  is  true,  among  the  rules 
to  which  it  has  not  become  fully  wonted ;  but  it  is 
the  same  divine  power  which  showed  itself  in  the  life 
of  Jesus,  and  the  praises  of  which  Paul  uttered  in 
words  which  have  never  been  surpassed.  Charity  has 
grown  wiser.  It  has  had  to  adapt  itself  to  new  con¬ 
ditions  ;  it  has  learned  more  of  the  real  needs  of 
men.  All  this  has  not  changed  its  nature.  Suppose 
a  charitable  man  to  be  giving  clothes  to  some  poor 
people  who  need  not  clothes  but  bread.  When  he 
learns  their  real  need  and  gives  them  bread,  has  his 
charity  changed  its  nature  ?  His  charity  was  the 
love  of  helpfulness  working  through  such  channels  as 
seemed  best  at  the  moment.  Political  economy  by 
itself  is  not  charity.  It  has  no  moral  worth.  When 
it  is  animated  by  the  power  of  love,  then  it  becomes 
the  means  of  charity. 

Thus  charity  and  religion,  when  once  their  highest 
truth  has  been  uttered,  remain  simple  and  unchange- 


5o 


ESSAYS 


able.  The  world  changes,  and  these  elements  have 
to  penetrate  new  sets  of  facts  and  new  conditions 
with  their  power.  So  religion  stands  in  the  presence 
of  the  laws  of  the  universe  that  have  revealed  them¬ 
selves  in  such  stupendous  majesty  in  these  later 
years.  So  charity  stands  in  the  presence  of  the 
political  economy  which  has  become  such  a  controll¬ 
ing  element  in  our  thought.  Each  retains  its  primi¬ 
tive  simplicity  in  the  presence  of  a  world  which  it  is 
to  conquer. 

When  Columbus  raised  the  cross  on  this  western 
hemisphere  it  was  not  a  new  religion  which  he 
brought ;  it  was  a  new  world  that  the  old  religion 
claimed  as  its  own.  The  two  commandments  in 
which  Jesus  summed  up  the  teaching  of  the  law, 
“Love  to  God  and  love  to  man,”  remain  to-day  the 
final  utterances  of  religion  and  morality. 

When  we  speak  of  a  final  word  in  regard  to  any¬ 
thing,  do  we  seem  to  put  a  bar  in  the  way  of  pro¬ 
gress  ?  Can  the  human  mind  see  finality  anywhere  ? 
We  sometimes  forget  that  without  something  that  is 
regarded  as  fixed  once  for  all  there  can  be  no  progress. 
Progress  requires  not  only  that  there  should  be  suc¬ 
cessive  stages  won  and  held  ;  it  also  requires  that 
some  principle  should  be  reached  upon  which  all 
future  accomplishment  can  be  based.  If  the  law  of 
gravitation  were  held  in  doubt,  how  would  the  pro¬ 
gress  of  astronomy  be  checked  !  Newton,  in  stating 
the  law  of  gravitation,  uttered  a  principle  within 
which  the  science  of  astronomy  could  develop  indefi¬ 
nitely,  beyond  which  it  cannot  pass.  So  the  teach¬ 
ing  of  Jesus  is  the  sphere  within  which  religion  and 
morality  may  develop  indefinitely,  but  beyond  which 
they  cannot  pass.  Love,  divine  and  human,  is  the 


HISTORIC  AND  IDEAL  CHRIST 


51 


highest  word,  a  word  which  we  are  even  now  hardly 
beginning  to  comprehend. 

If  Jesus  had  merely  uttered  such  teaching,  we 
might  have  had  another  school  of  philosophy  ;  or  we 
might  have  had  simply  another  great  individual  filling 
one  of  the  niches  of  history.  It  is  more  probable, 
however,  that  his  words,  unwritten  and  unsystematic 
as  they  were,  would  have  been  forgotten,  and  that 
he  would  have  been  forgotten  with  them.  We  cer¬ 
tainly  should  not  have  had  in  him  the  founder  of  a 
new  religion.  The  teaching  of  Jesus,  was,  however, 
embodied  in  his  life.  On  the  other  hand,  his  life 
would  have  been  remembered  simply  as  we  remember 
the  lives  of  other  heroes,  or  it  would  more  probably 
have  been  forgotten,  if  it  had  not  been  the  bearer  of 
the  teaching  which  we  have  just  contemplated.  Hap¬ 
pily  for  the  world,  the  two  elements,  the  teaching 
and  the  life,  were  united  in  him.  Whatever  theories 
we  may  hold,  whatever  theories,  we  may  reject,  in 
regard  to  the  nature  and  person  of  Jesus,  his  life  will 
have  a  position  and  a  power  unlike  that  of  any  other 
so  long  as  his  teaching  retains  its  place  as  the  inspira¬ 
tion  of  the  best  and  truest  living.  The  older  theolo¬ 
gians  insisted  that  the  blood  of  Jesus  had  infinite 
worth,  which  was  derived  from  the  presence  of  the 
indwelling  God.  So  the  outward  life  of  Jesus  gains 
sacredness  and  power  from  the  teaching  of  which  it 
was  the  incarnation. 

We  may  illustrate  the  power  that  is  won  when  the 
loftiest  teaching  and  a  noble  life  are  harmoniously 
joined,  by  a  reference  to  the  leader  of  men  who 
would  most  naturally  be  compared  with  Jesus.  To  a 
large  portion  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  world  Buddha 
holds  a  place  like  that  which  Jesus  holds  in  the  re- 


52 


ESSAYS 


gard  of  the  Christian.  He  is  believed  to  have  uttered 
the  words  which  alone  can  bring  emancipation  from 
the  evils  of  existence.  His  teaching  was  also  em¬ 
bodied  in  a  life  of  tender  and  compassionate  service. 
The  words  of  Buddha,  however  bare  they  may  seem 
to  us  of  the  highest  spiritual  truth,  were  to  his  fol¬ 
lowers  words  of  salvation ;  and,  being  such,  they 
added  unfading  glory  to  his  beautiful  life.  His  fol¬ 
lowers  never  dreamed  of  ascribing  to  him  superhuman 
qualities.  What  he  was,  any  human  being  might  in 
time  become.  None  the  less,  his  life,  because  in  it 
his  teaching  became  incarnate,  is  to  them  the  ideal 
life,  and  Buddha  stands  before  them  as  the  central 
figure  in  the  world’s  history. 

How,  then,  can  it  be  possible  that  Jesus,  from 
whom  the  nations  that  call  themselves  “  Christian  ” 
have  received  the  truth  that  seems  to  them  the  high¬ 
est,  should  not  have  a  place  that  is  all  his  own,  and 
that  his  life  should  not  be  set  apart  from  other  lives, 
not  necessarily  as  in  itself  different  from  them,  but 
as  being,  to  those  who  accept  his  truth,  the  source 
of  a  common  inspiration  ?  Thus  we  see  how  the 
simple  historic  Christ  may  and  must  stand  as  the 
ideal  for  those  who  accept  his  teaching. 

What  is  true  of  the  life  of  Christ  is  true  also  of  his 
death.  By  his  crucifixion  he  became  accursed  before 
the  Jewish  law.  His  followers  shared  his  pollution. 
They  were  outcasts  from  the  Jewish  sanctities.  Being 
under  the  curse  of  the  law,  they  were  free  of  the  law ; 
and  if  they  were  accursed  they  were  accursed  with 
him  who  was  to  them  the  very  Christ  of  God.  Thus 
their  shame  was  their  glory.  Their  condemnation 
was  their  liberty.  Thus  through  the  pain  and  igno¬ 
miny  of  the  cross  Jesus  passed  out  from  the  limita- 


HISTORIC  AND  IDEAL  CHRIST  53 

tions  of  his  race,  and  became  the  leader  of  the  best 
life  of  the  world.  Thus  the  cross  must  always  stand 
as  the  symbol  of  the  triumph  that  may  spring  from 
defeat,  of  the  glory  that  may  spring  from  shame.  It 
will  stand  as  the  symbol  of  that  self-sacrifice  which 
is  the  portal  of  the  truest  life  and  the  grandest 
victory. 


Ill 


THE  DISTINCTIVE  MARK  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

In  seeking  an  answer  to  the  question  What  is  the 
distinctive  mark  of  Christianity,  we  have  to  look  for 
something  that  is  peculiar  enough  to  separate  it  from 
other  religions,  and  that,  within  Christianity,  is  uni¬ 
versal,  fundamental,  and  definite  enough  to  be  re¬ 
garded  as  essential.  With  the  truth  of  any  teaching 
or  claim  of  Christianity  we  have,  just  here,  nothing 
to  do.  Our  question  is  not  whether  Christianity  in 
itself,  or  in  any  of  the  forms  under  which  it  has 
appeared,  is  true.  It  is  simply  what  Christianity 
actually  is.  Thus  we  may  dismiss  at  the  very  start 
the  claim  that  Christianity  is  true  while  other  reli¬ 
gions  are  false.  This  claim  is  by  no  means  distinctive. 
It  is  made  by  every  religion.  Again,  it  may  be  said 
that  Christianity  differs  from  other  religions  in  the 
fact  that  it  is  revealed.  There  is  in  this  claim  no¬ 
thing  peculiar  to  Christianity.  The  Brahman  claims 
that  the  Vedas  were  revealed.  They  have  been 
uttered  through  all  eternity.  But,  it  is  said,  the  con¬ 
tent  of  these  so-called  revelations  is  very  unlike  to 
that  of  Christianity.  This  is  true.  It  is,  then,  at  the 
substance  of  the  religion  that  we  are  to  look  and  not 
at  any  claim  as  to  its  origin. 

When  we  look  at  Christianity  itself,  and  strive  to 
detect  some  element  in  it  which  may  be  called  dis¬ 
tinctive,  we  are  at  first  bewildered  by  the  multiplicity 


DISTINCTIVE  MARK  OF  CHRISTIANITY  55 

and  divergence  of  the  forms  that  it  has  assumed.  We 
have  the  magnificent  pomp  of  the  Catholic  Church, 
and  we  have  the  severe  simplicity  of  the  Quaker.  We 
have  complicated  creeds  and,  over  against  these,  the 
protest  of  a  creedless  faith.  We  have  stress  laid 
here  upon  form,  and  there  upon  doctrine.  We  have 
continual  changes  as  to  form  and  doctrine.  What 
we  seek  is  something  permanent  and,  within  Chris¬ 
tianity,  universal. 

We  may  first  turn  to  those  creeds  of  the  church 
that  have  been  most  widely  accepted.  No  one  of 
these  has  been  universally  adopted,  indeed,  but  the 
so-called  Apostles’  Creed  and  the  Nicene  Creed  have 
come  very  near  to  this  universality.  These  are  so 
familiar  that  they  do  not  need  to  be  quoted  in  full. 
They  both  begin  with  the  recognition  of  the  one 
God.  They  then  state  certain  facts,  or  what  are 
assumed  to  be  such,  as  to  the  nature  and  history  of 
Christ.  The  Nicene  Creed  tells  us  that  he  was  be¬ 
gotten  of  the  Father  before  all  worlds,  that  he  was 
very  God  of  very  God ;  that  for  us  men  and  for  our 
salvation  he  came  down  from  heaven.  We  are  told 
of  the  Holy  Ghost  and  the  Holy  Church,  of  baptism 
for  the  remission  of  sins,  and  of  the  resurrection. 

Suppose  that  this  creed  had  been  and  were  now 
universally  accepted  by  the  church,  what  would  it 
tell  us  about  Christianity  ?  What  help  would  it  give 
us  in  our  present  quest  ?  I  must  answer,  practically 
none.  It  tells  us  of  a  divine  personality  who  is  the 
source  of  this  religion,  but  it  does  not  tell  us  what 
the  religion  is.  He  came  down  from  heaven,  we  are 
told,  and  died  for  us  men  and  our  salvation  ;  but 
what  he  accomplished  on  the  earth,  in  what  way  his 
death  accomplished  our  salvation,  we  are  not  told. 


56 


ESSAYS 


It  may  be  said  that  this  is  Christianity,  that  it  con¬ 
sists  in  the  recognition  and  the  adoration  of  him  who 
was  at  once  Man  and  God.  The  terms  Man  and  God 
are,  however,  in  themselves  so  general  as  to  be  for 
our  purpose  meaningless.  There  have  been  many  no¬ 
tions  of  God  and  many  kinds  of  men.  I  do  not  say 
this  in  criticism  of  the  creed.  It  is  a  vast  form  into 
which  those  who  used  it  poured  the  substance  of 
Christianity  as  they  understood  it.  Every  word  was 
for  them  full  of  real  meaning.  They  had  their 
thought  of  God.  They  knew  by  heart  the  story  of 
the  life  of  Christ.  They  had  their  theory  of  the 
efficacy  of  his  death.  It  is  this  substance  of  Chris¬ 
tianity  that  we  are  seeking  from  which  the  state¬ 
ments  of  the  creed  receive  their  real  significance. 

Further,  it  may  be  said,  the  careful  wording  of  the 
creed  implies  that  there  were  some  who  did  not  ac¬ 
cept  it  ;  that  it  was  designed,  not  merely  to  express, 
but  to  shape  Christianity.  Those  who  did  not  and 
do  not  accept  it  may  be  so  few  as  to  seem  a  negli¬ 
gible  quantity,  but  still  they  were  and  are,  and  their 
claim  ought  at  least  to  be  considered.  Still  further, 
what  is  asserted  in  the  creed  is  not  absolutely  distinc¬ 
tive  of  Christianity.  It  must  be  remembered  that  we 
here  have  no  regard  to  the  legitimacy  of  any  claim 
made  by  any  religion.  We  are  for  the  moment  look¬ 
ing  at  things  merely  from  the  outside.  Other  reli¬ 
gions  have  recognized  incarnations  of  gods.  Buddha, 
though  not  a  god,  is  believed  to  have  descended  from 
his  glorious  estate  in  heaven,  to  have  lived  for  the 
good  of  man  a  life  of  privation  and  effort,  and  to  have 
died.  The  comparison  will  be  rejected,  perhaps,  with 
scorn.  “  All  this,”  it  may  be  said,  “  is  so  unlike  Chris¬ 
tianity  ;  it  is  something  so  unutterably  far  beneath 


DISTINCTIVE  MARK  OF  CHRISTIANITY  57 


it.”  I  do  not  deny  the  difference.  It  simply  shows, 
however,  that  we  have  not  yet  touched  the  true 
essence  of  Christianity.  It  is  this,  whatever  it  may 
be,  that  makes  the  Christian  incarnation  so  different 
from  others,  that  makes  the  Christ  so  unlike  the 
Buddha. 

The  question,  then,  which  now  meets  us  is  that 
which  was  so  distinctly  put  by  Anselm  :  “  Cttr  Deus 
homo  ?  ”  Why,  in  the  belief  of  the  church,  did  God 
become  man  ?  If  we  can  get  a  clear  answer  to  this 
question,  it  should,  one  would  think,  give  us  the 
characteristic  of  Christianity.  It  would  give  us  the 
substance  that  would  fill  out  the  sublime  form  to 
which  we  have  just  referred.  The  difficulty  that 
meets  us  here  does  not  spring  from  lack  of  clearness 
or  definiteness.  It  comes  from  the  fact  that  we  have 
not  merely  one  answer  but  many.  We  are  confused 
by  the  multiplicity  of  responses.  Our  first  thought 
would  be,  perhaps,  of  the  doctrine  which  in  recent  con¬ 
troversies  has  been  known  as  that  of  the  atonement. 
We  often  forget,  however,  that,  though  to  some  ex¬ 
tent  something  akin  to  this  doctrine  had  been  recog¬ 
nized  earlier,  the  doctrine  itself  did  not  take  its  fun¬ 
damental  place  in  the  church,  and  begin  its  orderly 
development,  before  the  eleventh  century  of  our  era. 
Before  that  time  the  theory  that  the  death  of  Christ 
was,  in  some  sense,  a  price  paid  to  the  devil  had  been 
prominent,  and  this  indeed  held  its  place  still  later 
by  the  side  of  that  just  referred  to.  I  raise  here  no 
question  as  to  the  truth  of  this  or  any  other  dogma ; 
but  till  we  are  ready  to  deny  the  name  of  Christian 
to  the  multitudes  who,  before  and  since  the  time  of 
Anselm,  have  not  known  or  have  not  accepted  it,  we 
cannot  claim  that  it  is  essential  to  Christianity. 


58 


ESSAYS 


Discouraged  in  the  hope  of  finding  some  one 
dogma  that  shall  be  at  once  specific  and  universal  in 
Christianity,  we  may  be  tempted  to  look  at  the 
matter  merely  from  the  outside,  to  assume  that  the 
essential  characteristic  of  Christianity  may  be  found 
simply  in  the  fact  that  in  it  we  have  a  series  of 
changing  forms  and  beliefs  which  took  its  origin  from 
the  life  and  death  of  the  Christ.  These  changing 
forms  and  beliefs  followed  one  another,  and  grew  out 
from  one  another,  and  thus  formed  a  mighty  and 
ever-expanding  stream.  The  stream  has  been  contin¬ 
uous  though  the  elements  that  entered  into  it  may 
have  changed.  We  do  not  hesitate  to  speak  of 
the  Mississippi  as  a  single  river,  though  all  along  its 
course  it  has  been  swollen  by  inflowing  streams, 
though  all  the  water  that  constituted  it  at  its  start 
may  have  evaporated  or  become  absorbed  long  before 
it  pours  itself  into  the  sea.  Certainly  even  if  Chris¬ 
tianity  had  no  other  unity  than  this,  it  would  be  en¬ 
titled  to  be  called  by  a  single  name.  It  is,  however, 
not  a  lifeless  stream.  It  is  a  living  organism ;  and 
we  cannot  help  believing  that  it  must  have  been  ani¬ 
mated  by  a  single  soul. 

We  find  an  inner  and  spiritual  unity  in  every  other 
religion,  no  matter  through  how  many  changes  it  may 
have  passed.  Northern  Buddhism,  with  its  fantastic 
and  extravagant  forms,  looked  at  from  the  outside, 
seems  like  a  wholly  different  religion  from  the  simpler 
Buddhism  of  the  South.  Indeed,  some  of  the  be¬ 
liefs  which  seem  most  fundamental  have  become 
completely  changed  in  the  more  complicated  religion 
of  the  North.  Yet,  at  the  heart  of  both  the  North¬ 
ern  and  the  Southern  forms  of  Buddhism,  we  find 
the  impress  of  its  founder.  We  find  that  the  two 


DISTINCTIVE  MARK  OF  CHRISTIANITY  59 


are  thus,  in  fact,  one.  This  truth  might  be  illus¬ 
trated,  were  it  necessary,  by  the  history  of  other 
religions.  We  cannot  believe  that  in  this  respect 
Christianity  differs  from  the  rest.  Surely  no  one 
from  whose  teaching  any  form  of  religion  ever 
sprang  was  more  fitted  than  was  Jesus  to  leave  an 
abiding  influence  upon  the  religion  that  bears  his 
name.  As  in  the  case  of  Buddhism  we  have  to  look 
through  all  the  extravagances  of  its  Northern  form, 
to  consider  them  for  the  moment  as  non-existent,  if 
we  would  find  the  Buddha  seated  at  its  heart,  so  we 
might  expect  that  we  should  have  to  look  through  the 
changing,  sometimes  complicated  and  extravagant, 
forms  and  beliefs  which  bear  the  name  of  Christian¬ 
ity,  if  we  would  find  at  the  centre  of  them  all  the 
presence  of  the  Christ. 

The  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  said  Jesus,  is  like  leaven, 
which  is  hidden  in  a  measure  of  meal  till  the  whole 
is  leavened.  Never  was  uttered  a  truer  prophecy. 
The  influence  of  Jesus  went  forth  into  the  world.  It 
became  the  centre  of  what  was  recognized  as  practi¬ 
cally  a  new  religion.  Forthwith  the  habits  of  thought 
and  life,  that  were  prevalent  in  the  world,  began  to 
seek  to  take  possession  of  it,  like  the  tributaries  that 
flow  into  a  fresh  stream,  bringing  waters  clear  or  dis¬ 
colored,  as  it  may  chance.  The  thought  of  Greece 
poured  in  upon  it.  The  politics  of  Rome  found  a 
place  in  it.  Ambition,  worldliness,  the  love  of  the 
play  of  logic  and  of  metaphysical  subtleties,  gathered 
about  it  and  forced  an  entrance  into  it.  We  read 
the  history  of  all  this  and  we  call  it  the  history  of 
Christianity.  It  is  made  up  of  the  story  of  councils 
and  popes,  of  orthodoxies  and  heresies,  of  persecu¬ 
tions  —  persecutions  of  Christians  and  persecutions 


6o 


ESSAYS 


by  Christians.  All  these  things  and  others  like 
them  we  bring  together.  We  recount  them  in  some 
consecutive  series ;  and  this  we  call  the  History  of 
Christianity.  I  do  not  dispute  the  usefulness  or  the 
propriety  of  the  term.  Only  do  not  let  us  forget 
that  its  propriety  grows  out  of  a  superficial  conven¬ 
ience.  Do  not  let  us  confound  the  measure  of  meal 
with  the  leaven  that  is  hidden  in  it,  —  so  hidden  that 
it  is  sometimes  difficult  to  recognize  it.  Yet  it  is 
there,  and  has  been  there  all  along.  It  has  been 
there  doing  its  work.  Its  work  has  often  been 
secret.  In  the  external  forms,  in  the  clash  of  creeds 
and  of  personal  ambitions,  we  may  see  no  trace  of  it. 
Yet  it  was  at  the  heart  of  all. 

The  history  of  Christianity,  real  Christianity,  has 
never  been  written  and  never  can  be  written.  Pre¬ 
sent  in  every  moment  of  these  nineteen  centuries, 
within  this  outward  show  of  pomp  of  dogma  and 
pomp  of  worldliness,  has  been  the  Christ.  The  story 
of  the  gospel  has  been  present  through  all  these 
ages.  It  has  been  recognized  in  the  midst  of  the 
speculations  that  have  gathered  about  it.  By  the 
side  of  the  notions  that  seem  to  us  so  fanciful  in 
regard  to  a  ransom  paid  to  the  devil  St.  Augustine 
recognizes,  apparently  indeed  as  somewhat  subordi¬ 
nate,  the  lesson  that  comes  from  the  life  of  Christ ; 
and  St.  Anselm,  in  the  midst  of  his  speculations  in 
regard  to  what  was  due  to  the  honor  of  God,  dwells 
upon  the  beauty  of  the  life  of  Jesus  and  the  power  of 
his  example. 

The  real  history  of  Christianity  would  be  the 
story  of  lives  lived  in  faith  and  hope,  manifesting 
themselves  by  patience  and  meekness  under  trial,  or 
by  energy  and  heroism  in  the  time  of  need  ;  lives 


DISTINCTIVE  MARK  OF  CHRISTIANITY  61 


lowly  or  exalted,  that  were  full  of  kindly  and  helpful 
deeds  ;  devoted  and  self-forgetful  lives  ;  in  a  word,  lives 
that  had  been  touched  by  that  of  Jesus,  or  by  those 
that  had  been  touched  by  his.  It  is  the  history  of 
these  lives  that  have  formed  an  unbroken  series  dur¬ 
ing  these  nineteen  hundred  years  that  would  be  a 
history  of  Christianity  worthy  of  the  name. 

To  say  this  may  seem  like  giving  up  altogether  our 
quest  for  something  distinctive  in  Christianity.  In 
lands  where  the  name  of  Christianity  has  never  been 
uttered,  through  the  ages  that  preceded  the  appear¬ 
ance  of  Christianity  upon  the  earth,  there  have  been 
lives  inspired  by  love  and  faith.  There  have  been 
patient,  self-sacrificing,  and  heroic  lives.  Indeed,  what 
land  has  not  borne  such  ?  and  under  what  form  of  reli¬ 
gion  have  they  not  manifested  themselves  ?  As  the 
stress  of  dogma  has  grown  weaker,  many,  moved  by 
a  fear  like  that  which  has  been  just  suggested,  lest 
Christianity  should  have  nothing  to  mark  it  save  the 
circumstances  of  its  origin,  lest  it  should  have  no  spe¬ 
cialty  that  should  distinguish  it  from  other  religions 
and  raise  it  above  them,  have  sought  to  find  in  the 
spiritual  and  moral  life  upon  which  Christianity 
insists,  something  that  could  be  found  nowhere  else. 
Some  have  believed  that  they  found  this  specialty  of 
Christianity  in  the  faith  in  immortality  which  may  be 
based  upon  the  resurrection  of  Christ.  But  this 
faith  was  strong  in  the  world  before  the  appearance 
of  Christ,  and  it  is  strong  to-day  in  the  hearts  of 
many  who  have  never  heard  his  name.  Among  those 
who  to-day  accept  the  story  of  the  reappearance  of 
Christ  after  his  death,  I  believe  that  there  are  more 
who  do  it  because  on  other  grounds  they  believe  in 
the  future  life,  and  thus  this  reappearance  seems  nat- 


62 


ESSAYS 


ural  and  reasonable,  than  base  their  belief  in  the 
future  life  upon  this  event ;  just  as  I  believe  that, 
among  thinking  persons  who  accept  the  stories  of 
the  miracles  performed  by  Jesus,  there  are  more  who 
do  this  because  they  find  in  his  personality  and  his 
teaching  that  which  seems  to  justify  these  miracles 
than  base  their  belief  in  Christ  and  his  teaching 
upon  the  miracles.  We  do  not  lower  the  dignity  of 
the  resurrection  and  the  miracles  when  we  say  that 
to  those  who  accept  them  they  are  coming  to  be 
matters  which  put  an  additional  strain  upon  Chris¬ 
tian  faith  rather  than  foundations  which  support  it. 
They  are  believed  to  add  so  much  glory  to  the  mani¬ 
festation  of  Christ  in  the  world,  and  so  naturally  to 
flow  from  this  manifestation,  that  they  are  accepted 
gladly. 

Some  would  find  the  specialty  of  Christianity  in  its 
teaching  of  the  Fatherhood  of  God,  forgetful  of  the 
tender  words  of  the  Psalmist,  “  Like  as  a  father  piti- 
eth  his  children,  so  the  Lord  pitieth  them  that  fear 
him ;  ”  forgetful  of  Paul’s  quotation  from  the  Greek 
poet,  “  For  we  also  are  his  offspring  ;  ”  not  knowing 
perhaps  the  wider  use  of  this  form  of  thought  and 
speech.  What  is  Jupiter  but  Father  Zeus,  and  far 
back  in  the  Vedic  hymns  we  find  the  original  of  both 
Zeus  and  Jupiter  spoken  of  as  Dyaushpitar  or  Father 
Dyaus. 

Some  would  find  the  distinctive  mark  of  Christian¬ 
ity  in  a  particular  moral  precept.  They  make  much 
of  the  fact,  which  indeed  is  not  wholly  without  signifi¬ 
cance,  that  in  the  teaching  of  Confucius  the  Golden 
Rule  is  given  in  a  negative  form  only  :  “  Do  not  to 
others  what  you  would  not  have  them  do  to  you.” 
The  spirit  of  the  two  commands  is,  however,  similar ; 


DISTINCTIVE  MARK  OF  CHRISTIANITY  63 

and  leaving  out  the  question  of  the  form,  the  sub¬ 
stance  of  the  teaching  is  found  on  the  lips  of  many  a 
sage.  The  utterances  of  Buddha  are  full  of  injunc¬ 
tions  to  patience,  to  freedom  from  anger,  and  to 
service. 

Some  would  find  the  distinctive  mark  of  Chris¬ 
tianity  in  its  humanitarian  spirit.  But  nowhere  more 
than  in  Buddhism  is  this  spirit  manifested.  It  is 
related  of  a  disciple  of  Buddha  that  one  day  he  asked 
a  woman  of  low  caste  to  give  him  some  water.  She 
reminded  him  of  her  caste.  “  My  sister,”  he  an¬ 
swered,  “  I  did  not  ask  about  your  caste,  but  for  some 

water,  if  you  will  give  it  to  me.”  Buddha  is  reported 

* 

to  have  said,  when  reproached  for  admitting  an  out¬ 
cast  to  his  order,  “  My  Gospel  is  one  of  Grace  for 
all,”  and  he  added,  “  What  is  a  Gospel  of  Grace  for? 
It  is  one  that  may  be  preached  to  such  wretched 
sinners  as  this.” 

Shall  we,  then,  because  we  find  it  difficult  to  dis¬ 
cover  some  special  trait  in  Christianity  that  shall 
distinguish  it  from  every  other  religion,  give  up  our 
search  and  insist  that  it  has  no  distinction  ?  Shall 
we  assume  that  all  religions  stand  on  a  level  ?  There 
are  those,  indeed,  to  whom  such  a  position  as  this 
would  seem  to  be  the  only  fair  and  honorable  one. 
To  claim  that  Christianity  occupies  a  higher  ground 
than  any  other  religion  would  seem  to  them  to  smack 
of  conceit.  The  truth  of  history  may,  however,  be 
violated  by  too  much  catholicity  as  truly  as  by  too 
great  exclusiveness.  Such  critics  of  Christianity 
have  appealed  to  the  history  of  religions.  It  is  no 
more  than  fair,  then,  that  to  history,  carefully  stud¬ 
ied,  they  should  go.  It  would  be  to  fly  in  the  very 
face  of  historic  truth  to  affirm  through  a  certain 


64 


ESSAYS 


excess  of  delicacy  that  the  sculpture  of  any  other 
nation  is  equal  to  that  of  Greece.  There  is  no  reason 
why  we  should  not  examine  the  religions  of  the  world 
with  a  like  regard  for  the  actual  perspective  and  the 
true  relation  of  facts.  There  is  no  more  reason  why 
the  highest  form  of  religion  should  not  proceed  from 
one  portion  of  the  world  than  why  the  highest  art 
should  not  proceed  from  a  special  people.  National¬ 
ities  are  gifted  in  different  ways.  To  deny  this  would 
be  to  blur  the  actual  lines  of  history. 

But  where  shall  we  look,  after  the  failures  we  have 
experienced,  for  the  distinction  that  we  seek,  pro¬ 
vided  such  distinction  do  actually  exist  ?  Our  latest 
examination  failed  because  we  compared  merely  frag¬ 
ment  with  fragment.  We  found  something  that 
resembled  some  aspect  of  Christianity  in  one  reli¬ 
gion  and  something  that  resembled  another  aspect 
of  Christianity  in  another  religion.  The  only  proper 
method  of  comparison  is  to  take  each  religion  as  a 
whole.  Scattered  fragments  do  not  make  a  whole. 
Because  there  is  a  virtue  here  that  reminds  us  of  a 
Christian  virtue,  and  a  truth  there  that  reminds  us 
of  a  Christian  truth,  it  does  not  follow  that  the 
religion  in  which  such  virtues  and  such  truths  are 
grouped  together,  and  complemented  by  other  vir¬ 
tues  and  other  truths  harmonious  with  them,  may  not 
have  an  exaltation  and  a  worth  that  no  other  religion 
actually  possesses.  Neither  does  it  follow  that  these 
virtues  and  these  truths,  when  thus  combined  and 
complemented,  may  not  each  have  a  worth  far  greater 
than  that  which  they  possessed  in  their  separateness. 

Take,  for  instance,  the  humanitarian  spirit  of  Bud¬ 
dhism.  The  benign  founder  of  this  religion  stands 
as  an  ideal  of  self-forgetting  love.  According  to  the 


DISTINCTIVE  MARK  OF  CHRISTIANITY  65 


teaching  of  this  religion, — and  behind  this  teaching  we 
do  not  now  intrude, —  he  remained  outside  of  Nirvana, 
long  years  after  he  might  have  entered  it,  because  he 
would  not  take  his  rest  till  he  had  prepared  the  way 
by  which  the  brethren  that  he  loved  might  enter  it 
like  him.  We  have  seen  illustrations  which  might 
be  indefinitely  multiplied  of  the  tender  humanitarian- 
ism  of  the  religion  that  he  taught.  Shall  we  there¬ 
fore  insist  that  in  Buddhism  we  have  Christianity 
under  another  name  ?  When  we  look  more  closely, 
we  see  that  Buddhism  in  its  ideal  form  involves  a  life 
of  withdrawal  from  the  world,  a  life  of  beggary.  The 
monkish  life  or  the  life  of  the  recluse,  which  crept 
into  the  developing  Christianity,  which  was  wholly 
foreign  to  its  original  form,  and  which  has  been  out¬ 
grown  by  so  large  a  portion  of  Christendom,  was  the 
original,  and  has  been  the  permanent,  ideal  of  Bud¬ 
dhism.  To  call  attention  to  this  is  not  narrow¬ 
mindedness  or  bigotry.  It  is  not  to  rake  out  in  a 
hypercritical  spirit  obscure  circumstances  in  the  his¬ 
tory  of  this  faith.  It  is  simply  to  take  one  of  its 
most  primary,  its  most  obvious  and  essential,  charac¬ 
teristics,  and  to  see  it  as  it  is. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  is  no  student  of  Bud¬ 
dhism  with  any  right  to  claim  authority  who  does  not 
recognize  the  fact  that  Buddhism  in  its  typical  form 
is,  in  the  truest  sense  of  the  word,  atheistic.  Surely, 
in  comparing  religion  with  religion,  this  is  not  a 
trifling  matter  to  be  passed  over  without  notice.  Let 
us  glance  again  at  the  story  of  the  disciple  of  Buddha 
who  asked  the  woman  of  low  caste  for  water.  Who 
that  hears  the  story  could  fail  to  be  reminded  of  the 
scene  by  Jacob’s  well  ?  But  in  the  case  of  the  Bud¬ 
dhist  saint,  with  the  occurrence  described  the  story 


66 


ESSAYS 


ends.  In  the  case  of  Jesus  the  like  occurrence  is  but 
the  beginning  of  the  story.  The  Jew,  the  Samaritan 
woman,  the  water  and  the  well,  these  are  only  the 
framework,  the  scenery  for  the  great  conversation 
that  is  to  follow.  The  humanitarianism  is  as  great 
in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other,  but  to  this  is  added 
in  the  Christian  story  the  sublime  utterance  of  Jesus, 
an  utterance  which  the  Buddhist  saint  could  not  have 
made  without  being  false  to  his  religion,  —  “  God  is 
spirit :  and  they  that  worship  him  must  worship  him 
in  spirit  and  in  truth. ”  This  is  a  difference  between 
the  two  forms  of  teaching  that  meets  us  at  every 
turn.  Buddha  could  say,  “  Let  a  man  overcome  anger 
by  love  ”  and  “  Hatred  does  not  cease  by  hatred ; 
hatred  ceases  by  love.'"  He  could  not  say  “  Blessed 
are  the  peacemakers,  for  they  shall  be  called  the 
children  of  God.”  He  could  urge  purity ;  he  could 
not  say,  “  Blessed  are  the  pure  in  heart,  for  they 
shall  see  God.”  To  recognize  such  differences  is  to 
recognize  what  are  among  the  most  obvious  and  un¬ 
questionable  historic  facts. 

We  find,  then,  that  Christianity,  in  contrast  with 
this  one  religion  of  Buddhism,  unites  the  humani¬ 
tarian  virtues  which  are  so  beautifully  taught  by  the 
latter,  and  so  magnificently  illustrated  by  its  founder, 
with  a  certain  divine  element.  Jesus  found  in  the 
teaching  of  the  Jewish  Scriptures  two  great  com¬ 
mandments  which  he  accepted  as  their  sum  and  pre¬ 
sented  as  the  highest  expression  of  the  law  of  life. 
These  were  :  Love  to  God  and  Love  to  man.  Of 
these  two  principles  Buddhism  had  a  place  only  for 
the  second.  It  is  obvious  that  this  difference  in¬ 
volves  something  more  than  is  expressed  in  the 
simple  terms  of  its  utterance.  It  is  evident  that 


DISTINCTIVE  MARK  OF  CHRISTIANITY  67 

love  to  man  wholly  apart  from  any  faith  in  God 
must  be  in  some  respects  different  from  love  to  man 
which  is  united  with  the  thought  of  God  ;  just  as,  on 
the  other  hand,  a  love  to  God  held  apart  from  any 
love  to  man  would  be  very  different  from  a  love  to 
God  that  is  united  with  love  to  man.  Thus  it  is  that 
each  element  of  religion  is  in  itself  transformed  when 
it  is  united  with  other  elements ;  just  as  no  virtue  is 
complete  if  it  stands  alone.  “  He  that  offends  in  one 
point,”  said  St.  James,  “is  guilty  of  all.”  Whatever 
special  significance  he  may  have  attached  to  these 
words,  they  have  a  universal  significance.  There  is 
no  glory  like  that  of  completeness.  One  may  own 
certain  scattered  volumes  of  a  set  of  books.  When 
the  set  is  completed  what  worth  is  added  to  each 
separate  volume !  So  do  separate  truths  become 
each  filled  with  a  new  significance  when  they  are 
united  in  some  comprehensive  truth.  Thus  do  all 
the  different  elements  that  enter  into  Christianity 
transform  and  ennoble  one  another. 

Other  religions,  as  we  have  seen,  have  spoken  of 
God  as  the  Father.  What  difference  of  meaning  has 
the  word  according  as  the  idea  of  human  fatherhood 
varies !  As  our  thought  of  man  becomes  exalted,  as 
the  relation  between  parent  and  child  becomes  more 
wise  and  tender,  the  thought  of  the  universal  father 
assumes  a  new  significance  ;  just  as,  on  the  other 
hand,  all  human  relations  assume  new  meaning  in  the 
light  of  the  teaching  of  a  lofty  religion.  Thus,  though 
other  religions  have  called  God  Father,  there  must 
have  been  in  Jesus  a  peculiar  sense  of  sonship,  and 
this  he  called  upon  his  followers  to  share. 

Other  religions,  as  we  have  seen,  in  one  shape  or 
another,  perhaps  all  religions,  have  recognized  the 


68 


ESSAYS 


thought  of  the  life  after  death  ;  yet  how  different  is 
this  thought  according  to  the  varying  ideals  of  earthly 
life  !  On  the  other  hand,  what  dignity  does  the 
larger  thought  of  the  life  to  come  add  to  the  life  of 
the  present  !  Some  have  insisted  that  this  earthly 
life  must  be  belittled  by  the  contrast.  History  shows 
that  in  general  this  is  not  the  case.  As  some  one 
has  said,  it  was  when  in  France  death  was  voted  an 
eternal  sleep  that  blood  flowed  like  water.  What¬ 
ever  exalts  the  worth  of  the  individual  makes  life 
sacred. 

What  we  may  say  of  the  truths  of  Christianity  we 
may  also  say  of  its  moral  precepts.  Each  of  these  is 
to  be  seen  in  the  light  of  all  the  rest.  We  thus  see 
one  aspect  of  the  place  which  the  personality  of  Jesus 
fills  in  the  religion  that  bears  his  name.  Not  merely 
does  it  add  to  the  force  of  his  teaching  the  power  of 
personal  attraction  and  inspiration  as  it  has  done  to 
so  many ;  it  shows  by  a  living  example  the  relation 
of  one  part  of  his  teaching  to  another.  No  words 
could  so  well  draw  the  lines  of  separation  or  indicate 
the  proportion  of  intermingling.  It  shows  that  the 
power  of  Christianity  consists  not  in  this  or  that 
special  teaching,  but  in  the  fact  that  it  tends  to  em¬ 
body  itself  in  a  spirit  that  does  not  ask  what  has  been 
commanded,  but  takes  counsel  of  itself  and  of  its 
sympathy  with  its  greatest  ideal. 

In  my  own  thought  the  specialty  of  Christianity  is 
found  in  the  fact  that  it  has  no  specialty.  I  find 
that  other  religions  can  be  described  more  or  less 
perfectly  by  certain  formulas.  They  have  certain 
salient  points  ;  one  has  one,  and  another  has  another. 
One  emphasizes  one  truth  and  another  another.  One 
elevates  a  certain  aspect  of  life,  and  another  another. 


DISTINCTIVE  MARK  OF  CHRISTIANITY  69 

In  Christianity  the  whole  level  of  life  is  lifted.  We 
cannot  put  it  into  a  formula  except  so  far  as  we  may 
wish  to  emphasize  certain  aspects  of  it.  We  cannot 
attach  a  tag  to  it  which  shall  describe  its  content. 
We  say  that  it  is  love  to  God  and  man,  but  how  about 
that  personality  which  has  been  the  source  of  its 
greatest  power  over  the  hearts  and  lives  of  men  t 
Its  distinction  I  find  to  lie  in  its  universality. 

In  what  I  have  said  I  have  stated  my  idea  of  the 
essential  nature  of  Christianity,  and  have  illustrated 
this  by  comparing  certain  aspects  .of  Christianity 
chiefly  with  certain  aspects  of  one  other  religion. 
Obviously,  what  I  have  said  does  not  prove  anything. 
A  multitude  of  questions  remain  to  be  asked  and 
answered.  I  have  simply  tried  to  illustrate  the  man¬ 
ner  in  which  religions  should  be  compared  if  they  are 
compared  at  all.  To  state  this  method  more  fully,  I 
will  say  that  if  it  is  to  be  followed  scientifically,  it 
would  be  necessary  to  begin  with  a  careful  psycho¬ 
logical  examination.  We  should  see  clearly  what 
elements  of  human  nature,  ideal,  intellectual,  ethical, 
emotional,  and  the  rest,  demand  from  religion  stimulus 
or  satisfaction.  We  might  enter  these  upon  a  chart. 
Then  we  should  examine  each  religion  and  determine 
in  regard  to  each  just  how  many  and  what  of  these 
psychological  demands  are  met  by  it.  If  we  had 
things  arranged  in  such  a  way  that  each  religion 
should  throw  light  upon  those  elements  of  human 
nature  that  it  satisfies,  as  they  are  represented  on  our 
chart,  we  should  see  at  a  glance  how  nearly  it  fulfilled 
the  ideal  of  a  religion.  When  the  light  of  Buddhism, 
for  instance,  fell  upon  it,  the  humanitarian  virtues  or 
certain  classes  of  them  would  shine  forth,  but  all  the 
instincts  of  the  nature  that  demand  satisfaction  and 


7  o 


ESSAYS 


impulse  from  the  thought  of  God  would  be  left  in 
darkness. 

By  some  such  method  as  this  we  should  have  a 
scientific  test  of  the  degree  in  which  each  religion 
approached  completeness.  This  is  what  I  meant  by 
saying,  in  effect,  at  the  beginning  of  this  paper,  that 
I  proposed  to  take  each  religion,  so  far  as  it  was  con¬ 
sidered,  at  its  face  value.  In  the  method  described 
there  is  no  question  of  credentials.  The  question 
proposed  to  each  is,  “  Supposing  your  credentials 
are  all  right  and  that  your  claims  should  be  admitted, 
precisely  what  do  you  propose  to  do  for  man  ?  Here 
is  a  list  of  the  requirements  of  human  nature  ;  how 
far  do  you  propose  to  satisfy  them  ?  ”  This  method 
would  have,  indeed,  one  defect.  It  would  not  show 
the  added  gain  to  each  element  of  religion  as  others 
are  united  with  it,  and  the  wonderful  transformation 
of  each  religion  in  proportion  as  the  demands  of  the 
whole  nature  are  satisfied. 

I  am  confident  that  by  such  an  examination  the 
distinctive  characteristic  of  Christianity  would  be 
scientifically  proved  to  be  that  which  I  have  assumed 
—  Jesus  united  a  life  of  mystical  piety  with  a  life  of 
activity  among  men.  In  the  light  of  his  teaching  the 
virtues  became  blended  and  exalted  in  love  ;  and 
human  love  and  virtue  became  interpenetrated  by, 
and  blended  with,  the  divine  life. 

We  are  in  the  habit  of  speaking  of  religions  as  if 
they  were  many.  In  fact,  there  is  but  one  religion, 
of  which  what  we  call  religions  are  the  more  or  less 
partial  manifestations.  This  one  religion  is  not  to  be 
found  by  seeking  for  what  is  common  to  all  religions. 
The  element  reached  by  such  a  process  of  abstraction 
would  contain  nothing  that  is  not  found  in  the  lowest 


DISTINCTIVE  MARK  OF  CHRISTIANITY  71 


form  of  religion.  The  one  religion  differs  from  the 
historical  religions  not  through  being  more  abstract, 
but  by  greater  concreteness.  It  is  the  imperfect 
religions  that  are  abstract,  and  their  imperfection  is 
found  in  this  abstractness.  Buddhism,  as  we  have 
seen,  takes  the  humanitarian  elements  and  holds 
them  apart  from  the  element  of  conscious  relation¬ 
ship  to  God.  I  have  tried  not  to  prove  but  to  illus¬ 
trate  the  thought  that  Christianity  differs  from  other 
religions  in  its  greater  concreteness,  and  thus  in  being 
the  most  perfect  manifestation  of  the  one  religion.  Of 
course,  it  is  not  meant  that  there  was  an  original  com¬ 
plete  religion  from  which  the  various  religions  have 
taken  one  one  element  and  another  another.  Still 
less  is  it  meant  that  Christianity  has  brought  together 
elements  selected  from  other  religions. 

We  have  seen  that  nearly  all  religions  claim  to  be 
revealed.  It  may  be  interesting  to  ask,  in  the  light 
of  what  has  been  said,  in  what  respects  Christianity 
agrees  with  or  differs  from  others,  so  far  as  this  claim 
is  concerned. 

The  thought  of  evolution,  which  has  modified  in  so 
many  ways  our  notions  of  the  world,  cannot  fail  to 
make  its  influence  felt  in  regard  to  the  question  that 
is  before  us.  The  idea  of  creation  has  been  pro¬ 
foundly  modified  by  it.  A  few  years  ago  each  new 
appearance  in  the  world,  each  new  species  of  plant 
or  animal,  was  believed  by  most  Christians  to  be  the 
result  of  a  special  act  of  the  divine  will.  Man  was 
created  by  such  an  act.  The  appearance  of  Chris¬ 
tianity  in  the  world,  the  manifestation  of  its  founder, 
his  marvelous  birth,  his  presence  as  a  being  from  an¬ 
other  sphere  —  all  these  formed  a  fitting  continuance 
of  the  method  by  which  the  world  had  been  carried 


72 


ESSAYS 


through  its  many  stages,  and  a  fitting  climax  to  the 
whole.  Christianity  was  simply  a  new  creation  that 
concluded  and  crowned  a  series  of  numberless  crea¬ 
tions. 

So  far  as  our  thoughts  are  influenced  by  the  idea 
of  evolution  in  other  relations,  Christianity  in  this 
conception  of  it  would  stand  alone.  It  would  be  left, 
as  it  were,  hanging  in  mid-air,  the  stages  by  which  it 
had  been  approached  being  knocked  away  from  be¬ 
neath  it.  It  would  be  a  solitary  fact,  not  the  culmi¬ 
nation  of  a  series  of  facts.  This  condition  of  things 
manifestly  suggests,  if  it  does  not  demand,  a  recon¬ 
sideration  of  the  whole  theme. 

When  we  look  at  the  history  of  the  world  as  seen 
in  the  light  of  the  doctrine  of  evolution,  what  forces 
itself  upon  our  recognition  as  more  important  than 
anything  else  is  the  presence  of  a  movement  that 
has  been  going  on  steadily  from  the  beginning  in  the 
direction  of  certain  definite  results.  First  we  have 
the  world  adapting  itself  to  the  production  and  sup¬ 
port  of  life.  Then  life  appears.  Life  presses  up¬ 
ward  through  various  forms  until  man  enters  upon 
the  scene.  Then  come  higher  and  higher  manifesta¬ 
tions  of  the  intellectual  and  spiritual  life.  Religion 
appears.  At  last  Christianity  takes  its  place  and 
begins,  to  human  apprehension  very  slowly,  to  display 
its  own  inner  life  and  to  shape  the  life  of  the  world. 

Here  we  have  a  force  working  through  all  these 
ages,  in  one  direction.  What  is  the  nature  of  this 
force  ?  What  can  it  be  but  the  manifestation  of  the 
divine  life  in  the  world  ?  It  came  from  God,  and 
presses  up  to  the  glad  recognition  of  its  source,  and 
to  loving  fellowship  with  it.  The  religions  of  the 
world  are  its  utterances. 


DISTINCTIVE  MARK  OF  CHRISTIANITY  73 


“  Out  from  the  heart  of  nature  rolled 
The  burdens  of  the  Bible  old  ; 

The  litanies  of  nations  came, 

Like  the  volcano’s  tongue  of  flame 
Up  from  the  burning  core  below, 

The  canticles  of  love  and  woe.” 

This  divine  force  is  the  very  heart  and  core  of  the 
world’s  life.  In  Christianity  it  reaches  what  we  must 
regard  as  its  highest  utterance,  for  in  it  is  expressed 
most  clearly  the  relation  of  the  life  of  the  world,  in 
its  full  completeness,  to  the  life  of  God.  Yet  Chris¬ 
tianity  is  thus  far  only  the  germ  of  this  absolute  ful¬ 
fillment.  We  see  not  yet  all  things  put  under  him. 
We  find  in  it,  however,  the  principles  that  are  the 
promise  and  potency  of  the  highest  life  and  fullest 
thought  of  man. 

Thus  there  is  a  sense  in  which  all  religions  may  be 
said  to  be  natural,  and  a  sense  in  which  all  may  be 
said  to  be  revealed.  Do  you,  then,  I  may  be  asked, 
put  Christianity  on  a  level  with  all  other  religions  ? 
When  we  recognize  man  as  taking  his  place  in  the 
evolution  of  the  world,  as  the  lower  forms  of  life  have 
taken  their  place  in  it,  do  we  thereby  put  man  on  the 
level  of  the  brute  ?  Is  not  man  here  to  speak  for 
himself?  Is  not  Christianity  also  here  bo  speak  for 
itself  ?  Do  we  deny  that  man  was  divinely  created 
because  he  has  his  place  in  the  line  of  evolution  ?  Is 
Christianity  any  the  less  the*revelation  of  God  because 
it  also  has  its  place  in  the  history  of  the  world  ?  If 
this  is  a  godless  world,  then  any  revelation  that  may 
come  to  it  from  without  can  only  make  more  manifest 
the  blind  and  warring  forces  of  which  we  are  the 
sport  ;  but  if  the  world  is  God’s  world,  then  its  high¬ 
est  utterance  is  his  voice. 

In  the  days  of  Carlyle  and  the  New  England 


74 


ESSAYS 


Transcendentalists  much  emphasis  was  laid  on  the 
direct  vision  of  truth.  “  All  minds,”  said  Emerson, 
“open  into  the  infinite  mind.”  The  soul  recognized 
ideas  and  ideals  which  brought  their  own  credentials. 
They  needed  only  to  be  seen  to  be  believed  in.  Thus 
the  soul  stood  independent  of  the  outer  world  and 
gazed  upon  the  truth.  Then  came  what  seemed  to 
some  the  darker  days,  when  the  inward  vision  was 
obscured,  when  we  were  pointed  to  the  material 
aspects  of  the  world,  especially  to  the  law  of  natural 
selection,  which  seemed  to  be  the  only  guide  and 
ruler  of  the  world’s  life.  Now,  however,  we  may 
recognize,  as  I  have  already  intimated,  a  power  that 
has  been  working  through  these  external  relations, 
using  mechanical  elements  and  laws,  up  to  a  certain 
point,  using  the  principle  of  natural  selection,  but  in 
the  higher  forms  of  human  thought  and  life  setting 
at  defiance  this  law  which  it  had  used  as  long  as  it 
served  its  turn.  Now  at  last  the  transcendentalist 
and  the  biologist  may  be  reconciled.  The  world  has 
shown  itself  to  be  an  idealist ;  for  we  see  that  the 
ideas  and  the  ideals  which  to  the  transcendentalist 
seemed  to  be  revelations  made  to  the  individual  soul 
were  hidden  in  the  heart  of  the  world  itself,  and  the 
travail  of  the  ages  has  been  the  struggle  towards 
their  manifestation.  “  And  I  saw,”  cried  the  John 
of  the  Apocalypse,  “the  holy  city,  new  Jerusalem, 
coming  down  out  of  Heaven  from  God,  made  ready 
as  a  bride  adorned  for  her  husband.”  That  vision 
has  not  yet  been  fulfilled.  But  is  that  city  less  from 
God  which  we  see  rising  from  the  earth  ?  not,  indeed, 
as  yet  with  a  bride’s  adornment,  but  rather  in  the 
garb  of  one  who  serves. 

Christianity  differs  from  other  forms  of  religion, 


DISTINCTIVE  MARK  OF  CHRISTIANITY  75 


as  we  have  seen,  by  its  larger  completeness.  They 
open  to  the  life  of  God  and  man  in  one  or  two  direc¬ 
tions  only.  Christianity  is  like  the  holy  city  of  John’s 
vision,  with  gates  opening  to  the  North  and  the  South 
and  the  East  and  the  West,  fitted  to  absorb  into 
itself  what  comes  from  every  quarter,  and  to  exert 
its  power  in  every  direction  for  the  subjugation  and 
service  of  the  world.  There  could  be  no  more  sub¬ 
lime  vision  than  the  rising  of  this  city  out  of  the 
earth.  First  come  here  and  there  the  partial  mani¬ 
festations  of  which  I  have  spoken,  forerunners  of 
the  great  consummation.  Then  appears  Christianity, 
which  has  the  germinant  elements  of  development  in 
all  directions,  and  is  the  most  complete  revelation  of 
the  God  who  is  manifesting  himself  in  all. 

Such,  as  I  understand  it,  is  Christianity,  the  reli¬ 
gion  that  was  revealed  to  the  world  through  Jesus, 
and  somewhat  less  purely  through  his  apostles.  It 
has  been  wrapped  in  by  forms  and  dogmas  that  men 
have  believed  were  essential  to  its  very  being.  They 
have  had  power  because  the  life  of  Christianity  was 
within  them,  though  it  was  not  from  them.  In  these 
later  years  this  life  is  beginning  to  show  itself  more 
clearly  in  its  simple  beauty,  as  it  has  been  beheld 
now  and  then  by  some  in  every  church,  and  by  some 
also  who  were  not  recognized  as  belonging  to  any 
church.  Let  us  rejoice  in  its  light  and  yield  our¬ 
selves  to  be  the  instruments  of  its  power. 


IV 


KANT’S  INFLUENCE  IN  THEOLOGY 

The  revolution  which  Kant  accomplished  in  theo¬ 
logy  is  as  great  as  that  which  he  wrought  in  phi¬ 
losophy.  Indeed,  I  believe  that  this  change  in  our 
theological  ideas  was  what  chiefly  interested  him  in 
his  philosophical  investigations.  The  basis  that  he 
laid  for  a  new  theology  is,  I  know,  by  some  considered 
to  have  been  a  mere  afterthought.  With  this  view 
I  cannot  agree.  Kant’s  interest  in  religion  is  unmis¬ 
takable.  It  was  evidently  profound,  and  if  all  his 
speculations  are  seen  in  their  outcome  to  point 
towards  a  reconstruction  of  theology  and  the  placing 
of  it  upon  a  new  foundation,  there  would  seem  to  be 
no  reason  why  we  should  not  recognize  this  as  be¬ 
longing  to  Kant’s  fundamental  thought.  All  the 
more  reasonable  is  this  when  we  notice  how  his  in¬ 
terest  in  religion  was  manifested  during  his  whole 
mental  development,  and  how  he  believed  in  it  even 
when  his  philosophical  principles  might  point  in  the 
other  direction. 

This  position  is  especially  noteworthy  as  it  is  ex¬ 
hibited  in  the“Traume  eines  Geistersehers.”  We 
find  here  even  a  foreshadowing  of  the  method  that 
Kant  followed  in  the  “Critique  of  Pure  Reason.”  In 
one  part  of  this  essay  he  presents  a  scheme  which 
would  make  the  existence  of  disembodied  spirits 
plausible.  This  he  calls  a  bit  of  mystic  (geheimen) 


KANT’S  INFLUENCE  IN  THEOLOGY 


77 


philosophy.  Then  he  presents  a  view  which  would 
make  such  a  belief  absurd.  This  he  calls  a  bit  of 
vulgar  (gemeinen)  philosophy.  Then  follows  a  state¬ 
ment  of  the  result  of  this  comparison.  Kant  claims 
to  have  put  the  considerations  pro  and  con  into  their 
respective  scales,  and  to  watch  impartially  to  see 
which  outweighs  the  other.  He  adds,  however,  “The 
scales  of  the  understanding  are  not  quite  impartial, 
and  the  one  that  bears  the  inscription,  ‘  Hope  for  the 
future y  has  a  mechanical  advantage,  so  that  even 
lighter  reasons  that  fall  into  it  cause  weightier  specu¬ 
lations  that  are  placed  in  the  other  to  kick  the  beam.” 
He  adds,  “This  is  the  only  unfairness  of  which  I 
cannot  easily  rid  myself,  and  of  which  I  never  shall 
rid  myself.”  1  Thus,  after  letting  the  intellect  pre¬ 
sent  the  arguments  from  each  side,  he  suffers  feeling 
to  determine  the  result. 

The  general  nature  of  the  revolution  which  Kant 
accomplished  in  theology  is  familiar.  He  showed 
that  the  ideas  upon  which  religion  rests  cannot  be 
proved  by  any  logical  process.  They  lie  outside  the 
world  of  human  reasoning.  If  they  cannot  be  proved, 
they  can  as  little  be  disproved.  If,  therefore,  there 
is  any  extralogical  ground  for  accepting  them,  they 
may  be  held  without  fear  of  attack  from  the  side  of 
intellect.  The  ground  for  their  acceptance  he  found 
in  the  moral  law.  He  did  not,  as  many  have  done, 
reason  back  to  the  thought  of  God  as  the  Being 
whom  this  law  by  its  very  existence  reveals.  He 
found  in  the  thought  of  God  and  of  Immortality  the 

1  See  Kant  Studien,  Band  i.,  Heft  i.,  for  an  extremely  interesting 
article  by  Dr.  E.  Adickes,  by  which  what  was  said  above  was  sug¬ 
gested.  Dr.  Adickes  calls  attention  to  other  similar  statements  by 
Kant. 


78 


ESSAYS 


elements  without  which  the  fulfillment  of  the  moral 
law  is  impossible.  This  law  is  absolute.  It  must  be 
fulfilled.  Therefore,  we  have  the  right  to  postulate 
God  and  Immortality,  since  these  furnish  the  only 
conditions  which  make  obedience  possible.  It  is  as 
if  two  men  were  fighting  with  swords.  One  proposes 
to  the  other  that  they  should  lay  down  these  weap¬ 
ons.  As  soon  as  this  disarmament  is  accomplished 
he  pulls  out  a  pistol  and  has  the  other  at  his  mercy. 

The  two  sides  of  Kant’s  system  are  thus  intellec¬ 
tual  agnosticism  and  religious  faith.  In  considering 
Kant’s  influence  upon  theology  this  agnostic  element 
should  have  full  recognition.  Very  many  have  ac¬ 
cepted  this  element  of  Kant’s  teaching  who  have 
flatly  rejected  the  other.  The  latest  important  mani¬ 
festation  of  this  form  of  the  influence  of  Kant  is 
found  in  the  system  of  Herbert  Spencer.  This  is, 
however,  only  a  single  illustration  of  a  widely  ex¬ 
tended  fact.  It  is  doubtless  owing,  in  part  at  least, 
to  Kant  that  agnosticism  is  at  the  present  day  so 
widespread.  It  often  finds,  indeed,  reasons  for  its 
existence  other  than  those  laid  down  by  Kant.  Still 
the  agnosticism  of  Kant  furnished  a  powerful  impulse 
in  the  direction  of  this  form  of  thought,  if  thought  it 
can  be  called.  My  special  theme  is,  however,  not  so 
much  the  influence  of  Kant  upon  theology  from  the 
outside  as  his  influence  in  theology.  The  phenomena 
we  have  been  considering  lie  outside  of  positive  theo¬ 
logy  and  are  hostile  to  it.  Kant’s  agnosticism  has 
also  from  time  to  time  exerted  an  influence  within 
theology,  and  has  given  rise  to  special  forms  of  theo- 
logic  thought.  Doubtless  it  gave  an  impulse  to  the 
intellectual  agnosticism  of  Sir  William  Hamilton  and 
of  Mansel. 


KANT’S  INFLUENCE  IN  THEOLOGY 


79 


The  influence  exerted  by  the  intellectual  agnosti¬ 
cism  of  Kant  taken  by  itself  was,  however,  in  a  sense 
accidental.  It  has  no  relation  to  his  work  taken  as 
a  whole.  It  is  the  influence  of  Kant  along  the  line 
of  his  own  special  and  complete  ideal  that  is  most 
important  for  our  purpose.  In  this  we  have  the 
result  of  his  personal  pressure.  We  have  the  out¬ 
come  of  the  system  which  represented  his  whole 
thought. 

To  understand  this  influence  in  theology  it  is  im¬ 
portant  that  we  should  thoroughly  understand  the 
religious  aspect  of  the  system  of  Kant  in  all  its 
assumptions  and  implications.  For  this  it  is  neces¬ 
sary  to  make  a  very  careful  examination  of  the 
Kantian  postulates. 

The  first  fact  which  we  meet  as  we  enter  upon 
this  examination  is  that  two  sets  of  postulates  are 
put  forth  by  Kant.  These  are  not  only  unlike ; 
they  are,  taken  in  connection  with  the  development 
of  his  thought,  in  some  respects  contradictory  and 
irreconcilable.  If  they  stood  alone  we  might  indeed 
combine  them,  a  little  awkwardly  perhaps,  in  a  whole, 
of  which  they  might  be  complemental  elements.  We 
must  take  them,  however,  where  we  find  them ;  and 
doing  this  we  see  that  it  is  impossible  for  them  to 
exist  side  by  side. 

The  first  of  these  sets  of  postulates  is  found  in  the 
“Critique  of  Pure  Reason.”  In  this  work  Kant  in¬ 
sists  that  the  moral  law  is  a  mere  phantom  of  the 
brain  unless  it  be  regarded  as  the  expression  of  the 
will  of  a  lawgiver,  and  unless  its  authority  be  enforced 
by  the  sanction  of  reward  and  punishment.  The 
first  of  these  requirements  involves  the  existence  of  a 
divine  Lawgiver.  The  second  involves  a  future  life, 


8o 


ESSAYS 


in  which  the  sanctions  of  the  law  can  be  fulfilled. 
We  are  thus  forced  to  postulate  the  existence  of  God 
and  Immortality.  These  postulates,  as  here  pre¬ 
sented,  have  two  aspects.  One  of  these  may  be 
called  cosmic,  the  other  may  be  called  personal. 
According  to  the  cosmic  point  of  view,  the  universe 
would  fail  to  satisfy  the  demands  of  our  reason  if 
virtue  did  not  meet  its  reward,  and  if  vice  were  not 
punished.  Further,  it  seems  to  be  somewhat  vaguely 
intimated  that,  without  a  lawgiver  and  without  sanc¬ 
tions,  the  moral  law  would  be  a  mere  phantom  of  the 
brain,  because  it  would  stand  outside  of  the  working 
forces  of  the  world,  pointing  backward  to  no  source 
and  forward  to  no  result.  In  regard  to  the  personal 
aspect  the  statements  are  much  more  clear  and 
strong,  and  upon  this  the  chief  emphasis  is  laid.  The 
whole  discussion,  indeed,  stands  under  the  heading, 
“  What  shall  I  hope  ?  ”  With  no  thought  of  a  law¬ 
giver  the  moral  law  would  have  no  binding  force  for 
the  individual.  Without  the  thought  of  a  lawgiver 
and  of  the  sanctions  of  the  law  the  individual  would 
lack  the  motive  power  ( Triebfeder )  necessary  to 
obedience.  We  are  told,  indeed,  that  the  moral 
sentiment  must  be  regarded  as  the  condition  of 
blessedness,  and  not  itself  spring  from  the  hope  of 
blessedness  as  its  reward  ;  for  in  this  case  it  would 
have  no  moral  worth.  This  can  be  reconciled  with 
the  rest  of  the  discussion  only  by  assuming  that  the 
moral  sense  must  exist  independently  of  any  other 
consideration,  but  that  practically  it  would  lack 
power,  unless  aided  by  the  impulses  to  which  refer¬ 
ence  has  been  made. 

It  is  important  to  look  a  little  more  deeply  into  the 
nature  of  these  postulates.  By  whom  and  under 


KANT’S  INFLUENCE  IN  THEOLOGY 


8 1 


what  circumstances  are  these  supposed  to  be  made  ? 
Are  they  supposed  to  be  made  by  the  sinner  who  is 
struggling  to  obey  the  law  but  finds  it  impossible  ? 
Is  it  he  who  cries  in  his  great  need,  “  There  must  be 
a  God  and  a  future  life,  for  without  the  stimulus  that 
these  offer  I  cannot  keep  the  law”?  Could  it  be 
that  Kant  himself  in  his  quiet  and  studious  life  at 
Konigsberg  felt  so  strongly  the  need  of  help  in  his 
striving  to  attain  righteousness  that  he  made  these 
postulates,  assuming  that  all  without  which  he  would 
fail  in  the  great  struggle  must  have  reality  ?  I  think 
that  these  questions  must  be  answered  in  the  nega¬ 
tive.  These  postulates  seem  to  me  not  to  take  the 
form  which  such  a  cry  for  support  in  the  hard  con¬ 
tests  of  life  would  naturally  assume.  It  will  be 
noticed  that  it  is  not  a  cry  for  help.  It  is  not  the  be¬ 
lief  that  there  must  be  some  power  that  will  come  to 
the  aid  of  the  sinner  who  is  sore  beset.  The  cry  is  not 
“  Save  me  or  I  perish  !  ”  In  his  religion  Kant  was  the 
true  child  of  the  eighteenth  century.  In  other  words, 
he  was  a  deist.1  The  mystical  element  was  wholly 
foreign  to  his  idea  of  religion.  God  was  to  him  the 
Lawgiver  who  awarded  to  men  the  results  of  their 
conduct  according  as  it  had  been  good  or  ill,  and  who 
established  the  conditions  under  which  the  possi¬ 
bility  of  the  fulfillment  of  the  Law  could  exist.  In 
other  words,  God  established  the  rules  of  morality, 
prepared  a  fair  field  for  the  struggle,  and  awarded 
the  prizes  of  victory  or  the  penalties  of  defeat.  All 
this  was  external.  In  this  scheme  God  was  repre¬ 
sented  as  watching  with  impartial  eye  the  great  con- 

1  Hermann  denies  that  Kant  can  properly  be  called  a  Deist,  but, 
as  it  seems  to  me,  on  insufficient  grounds.  See  Die  Religion  im  Ver * 
haltniss  zur  Welterkennitng  und  zur  Sittlichkeit ,  p.  173. 


82 


ESSAYS 


test,  but,  except  by  offering  the  external  stimulus  of 
hope  and  fear,  never  as  stooping  to  the  help  of  those 
who  in  themselves  were  too  weak  to  win  the  victory. 
The  postulates  of  Kant  were,  by  their  very  nature, 
those  of  an  observer  of  the  conflict  rather  than  of 
one  who  was  himself  in  the  midst  of  it.  They  are 
the  postulates  of  philosophy,  not  those  of  life.  Kant 
believed  that  unless  the  moral  law  was  supported  by 
the  authority  of  a  lawgiver  and  the  sanctions  of 
reward  and  punishment,  it  would  not  be  effective  in 
the  world. 

From  all  this  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  Kant 
took  a  merely  utilitarian  view  of  the  case.  He  was 
not  sufficiently  the  child  of  the  eighteenth  century 
for  this.  He  did  not  think  of  the  moral  law  simply 
as  something  necessary  for  the  preservation  of  social 
order.  He  venerated  that  law  as  the  most  sublime 
thing  to  which  the  thought  of  man  could  attain.  It 
moved  him  to  eloquence  as  nothing  else  did.  When 
he  spoke  of  himself  as  awed  by  two  things  —  the 
starry  heavens  above  and  the  moral  law  within  —  the 
glory  of  the  starry  heavens  is  seen  to  be  as  nothing 
to  that  of  the  moral  law.  He  called  their  grandeur 
up  before  the  thought  of  men  that  the  sublimity  of 
the  moral  law  might  be  more  clearly  seen.  It  was 
not  that  men  might  lead  orderly  and  useful  lives  that 
he  urged  the  claims  of  the  law,  but  that  they  might 
fulfill  their  true  nature.  In  the  moral  law,  and  only 
in  this,  do  men  come  into  relation  with  the  absolute 
reality. 

When  Kant  put  forth  these  postulates,  he  had  evi¬ 
dently  not  fully  thought  out  his  theory  of  ethics. 
When  seven  years  later  his  “  Critique  of  Practical 
Reason  ”  was  published,  it  left  no  place  for  the  pos- 


KANT’S  INFLUENCE  IN  THEOLOGY  83 


tulates  we  have  considered,  so  far  as  these  had  a 
personal  application.  According  to  the  principles 
laid  down  in  this  later  work,  an  act,  to  have  moral 
value,  must  be  performed  purely  from  moral  motives. 
The  idea  of  reward  or  punishment  adds  an  unmoral 
element  to  the  transaction.  The  postulate  which 
recognized  the  thought  of  reward  or  punishment, 
even  as  a  subordinate  impulse  to  moral  action,  be¬ 
came  thus  absurdly  out  of  place.  Kant  now  distinctly 
tells  us  that  there  can  be  but  one  source  from  which 
stimulus  ( Triebfeder )  to  obedience  can  be  sought, 
and  that  is  reverence  for  the  law  itself.  In  saying 
this  he  repudiates  the  kind  of  stimulus  upon  which  his 
postulates  in  their  earlier  form  were  so  largely  based. 
Kant  evidently  saw  that  he  must  present  the  postu¬ 
lates  on  which  alone  religious  faith  can  rest  under  a 
wholly  new  form.  The  end  of  the  moral  law,  he  now 
tells  us,  is  the  attainment  of  the  highest  good.  The 
highest  good  consists  in  the  adjustment  between 
happiness  and  desert.  There  is  nothing  in  goodness 
itself  that  necessarily  produces  happiness.  If  the 
moral  idea  is  to  be  fulfilled,  we  must  assume  a  Being 
with  power  to  make  this  adjustment.  Furthermore, 
although  the  element  of  personal  interest  may  be  a 
vanishing  quantity,  it  never  can  be  wholly  eradi¬ 
cated  from  individual  life.  The  individual  can,  at  no 
moment  of  time,  become  perfectly  moral  ;  conse¬ 
quently  the  moral  law  needs  eternity  for  its  fulfill¬ 
ment.  From  this  fact  springs  the  postulate  of 
immortality. 

What  I  have  called  the  cosmic  aspect  of  the  postu¬ 
lates  is  much  more  marked  in  this  than  in  the  ear¬ 
lier  form.  In  fact,  it  here  exists  alone.  There  is 
no  suggestion  now  of  help  to  the  individual  in  his 


84 


ESSAYS 


struggle  after  the  better  life.  The  moral  law  is  now 
applied  no  longer  to  the  individual,  but  only  to  the 
universe.  These  later  postulates  contain  elements 
foreign  to  the  moral  law,  so  far  as  the  individual  is 
concerned.  The  law  as  defined  by  Kant  is  the 
categorical  imperative,  nothing  more  or  less.  It  is 
not  the  business  of  the  subject  of  the  moral  law  to 
consider  possibilities  of  success  or  failure,  but  simply 
to  obey.  Such  considerations  would  be,  according 
to  Kant’s  general  theory,  as  unmoral  as  personal 
hope  or  fear. 

Moreover,  these  later  postulates  lay  upon  the  indi¬ 
vidual  a  duty  which  is  not  included  in  the  moral  law. 
The  highest  good,  we  are  told,  is  the  correlation  be¬ 
tween  happiness  and  desert ;  we  are  told,  also,  that 
it  is  our  duty  to  further  the  highest  good.  But  the 
moral  law  lays  upon  the  individual  no  obligation  to 
adjust  happiness  to  desert.  It  is  not  the  business  of 
the  private  citizen  to  punish  the  wrong-doer.  Jesus 
uttered  truly  the  command  of  morality  when  he 
bade  his  disciples  to  be  perfect  as  their  Father  in 
Heaven  is  perfect,  whose  sunshine  and  whose  rain 
bless  alike  the  evil  and  the  good.  Thus  these  later 
postulates  of  Kant  look  wholly  away  from  the  needs 
of  the  individual.  Primarily  they  concern  not  morality 
as  such.  They  are  the  basis,  or  rather  the  form,  of 
faith  in  a  perfected  universe.  They  are,  indeed,  not 
postulates  at  all  in  the  sense  in  which  Kant  earlier 
used  the  term.  They  do  not  involve  what  is  neces¬ 
sary  to  the  obedience  of  the  individual.  They  are  in 
no  true  sense  practical.  They  are  simply  the  appli¬ 
cation  of  the  moral  law  to  the  universe ;  and  the  uni¬ 
verse  needs  no  help  from  postulates. 

It  has  been  necessary  to  make  this  analysis  of  the 


KANT’S  INFLUENCE  IN  THEOLOGY  85 

postulates  of  Kant,  because  it  is  only  by  understand¬ 
ing  them  fully  that  we  have  any  test  by  which  to  de¬ 
termine  what  elements  of  later  theology  bear  marks 
of  his  influence.  This  influence  is  not  to  be  found 
merely  in  the  reproduction  of  his  special  forms  of 
thought  and  utterance.  It  is  something  vastly  more 
delicate  and  pervasive  than  this.  It  concerns  not 
the  precise  results  of  Kant,  but  the  principles  or 
assumptions  upon  which  these  results  rest.  Indeed, 
the  postulates  as  laid  down  by  Kant  in  different  con¬ 
nections  are  so  self-contradictory,  he  so  absolutely 
ignores  in  one  place  what  he  had  so  solemnly  affirmed 
in  another,  that  his  precise  statements  can  have  little 
weight.  In  fact,  the  implications  of  his  teaching 
have  had  vastly  more  effect  than  its  special  form. 
We  have  now  to  inquire  what  these  implications  are. 

Every  particular  proposition  implies  the  truth  of  a 
broader  proposition,  of  which  it  furnishes  a  more  or 
less  concrete  example.  Every  special  truth  implies 
a  larger  truth  in  and  through  which  it  exists.  The 
special  truth  may,  indeed,  prove  to  be  the  only  form 
in  which  the  larger  truth  is  valid  ;  but  none  the  less  is 
it  through  the  larger  truth  that  this  special  form 
has  validity.  The  order  Bimana  has  under  it  only 
one  genus,  the  genus  Homo  ;  but  though,  in  this 
case,  the  order  and  the  genus  are  identical,  neverthe¬ 
less  it  is  true  that  one  is  the  order  and  the  other  is  a 
genus  within  it. 

When  Kant  affirmed  that  the  truth  of  religion  rests 
not  upon  intellectual  arguments  but  upon  postulates 
growing  out  of  our  recognition  of  the  rightful  supre¬ 
macy  of  the  moral  law,  his  assumption  was  that  the 
law  has  for  man  such  worth  that  it  must  be  accom¬ 
plished  at  whatever  cost,  and  that  whatever  is  ne- 


86 


ESSAYS 


cessary  for  this  must  be  assumed  to  exist.  It  was 
thus  the  worth  of  the  moral  law  that  furnished  the 
ground  for  his  postulates.  From  this  we  may  logic¬ 
ally  infer,  first,  that  if  our  sense  of  the  worth  of 
any  particular  result  be  sufficiently  strong,  we  may 
postulate  whatever  is  necessary  to  the  accomplish¬ 
ment  of  it.  In  point  of  fact,  the  moral  law  may  be 
the  only  thing  that  has  sufficient  worth  for  such 
unquestioning  postulates.  Whether  this  is  so  or  not, 
experience  alone  can  show.  This,  however,  remains 
true,  that  according  to  the  degree  of  worth  which  we 
find  in  any  desirable  result,  just  in  that  degree  will 
the  postulates  concerning  it  have  force. 

Secondly,  a  corollary  from  ail  this  was  recognized 
practically  by  Kant  himself.  It  is  to  the  effect  that 
nothing  can  have  any  place  in  theology  which  does 
not  represent  some  vital  interest  in  the  religious  life. 
Abstract  dogmas,  merely  theoretical  assumptions,  fall 
away.  Theology  has  no  right  to  exist  except  so  far 
as  the  true  life  of  the  spirit  is  involved  in  it.  Thus  it 
is  implied  that  theology  can  rest  on  no  merely  intel¬ 
lectual  belief.  If  all  religious  faith  rests  upon  judg¬ 
ments  of  worth,  merely  intellectual  acceptance  of 
theological  doctrines  has  nothing  to  do  with  such 
faith.  Theology  thus  must  become  something  living, 
if  it  is  to  have  any  recognition. 

Thirdly,  religion  is  thus  wholly  a  matter  of  faith. 
It  must  be  a  faith  that  springs  out  of  the  deep  needs 
of  the  soul ;  but  still  it  is  faith,  unaided  by  the  in¬ 
tellect,  sustained  by  its  own  buoyancy  alone. 

Fourthly,  reverence  for  the  moral  law  is  a  feeling. 
The  sense  of  obligation  is  a  feeling.  Kant  would 
stoutly  deny  this.  He  claimed  that  the  supremacy 
of  the  moral  law  is  a  revelation  of  the  reason,  as  seen 


KANT’S  INFLUENCE  IN  THEOLOGY  87 


on  its  practical  side.  Every  intellectual  element  is, 
however,  according  to  Kant,  absent  from  this  proce¬ 
dure.  The  supremacy  of  the  moral  law  is  something 
that  is  felt  rather  than  seen.  Kant  thus  practically 
removed  the  basis  of  religious  belief  from  the  head 
to  the  heart,  from  the  sphere  of  thought  to  that  of 
feeling. 

Fifthly,  it  is  hardly  more  than  a  summary  of  all 
this  to  say  that,  with  Kant,  theology  becomes  sub¬ 
jective  rather  than  objective  ;  so  that  it  may  be  said 
to  rest  upon  religion  rather  than  religion  upon  it. 

There  is  a  passage  in  the  “  Critique  of  Pure  Rea¬ 
son  ”  in  which  Kant,  contrary  to  his  usual  habit, 
indulges  in  figurative  speech.  The  figure  is  vividly 
presented  and  introduces  into  the  dry  discussion  a 
moment  of  welcome  relaxation.  He  speaks  of  the 
Land  of  the  Pure  Understanding.  He  says,  “  We 
call  it  the  land  of  truth,  a  charming  name.”  This 
land  is  an  island.  It  is  surrounded  by  a  wide  and 
stormy  ocean.  In  this  ocean  illusion  reigns. 
Many  a  fog-bank  and  many  a  dissolving  iceberg 
cheat  the  seafarer  into  the  hope  of  the  discovery  of 
new  lands.  Thus  they  lead  him  into  adventures 
which  he  can  never  give  over,  and  in  which  he 
never  can  succeed.  Kant  undertakes  to  survey 
the  land  which  we  possess,  the  land  of  the  under¬ 
standing,  and  to  inquire  into  the  terms  of  our  pos¬ 
session.  He  intimates  that  if  we  can  find  no  other, 
we  may  perhaps  content  ourselves  with  this.  He 
refers,  of  course,  to  the  attempts  of  the  philoso¬ 
phers  to  find,  by  some  intellectual  process,  a  basis  for 
a  knowledge  of  absolute  reality  apart  from  that  which 
we  find  within  ourselves.  Such  attempts  he  regards 
as  hopeless.  Yet,  later,  he  himself  sets  forth  to  find 


88 


ESSAYS 


the  continent  of  objective  reality.  He  seeks  it  by  a 
course  that  no  navigator  had  followed,  though  many 
a  simple  soul  had  drifted  thither,  not  witting  what 
it  did.  He  believed  that  he  had  succeeded  in  his 
search.  The  land  he  found  was  very  unlike  that 
which  he  had  left  and  its  inhabitants  spoke  a  differ¬ 
ent  language.  It  was  the  land  not  of  knowledge  but 
of  faith.  The  people  did  not  say,  “  It  is,”  but,  “  It 
must  be,”  and  they  claimed  that  a  must  be  is  stronger 
than  an  is.  To  the  stranger  it  might  seem  a  topsy¬ 
turvy  world  ;  for  the  ideals  in  which  its  people  be¬ 
lieved  rested  on  no  basis  of  fact.  What  they  took  as 
fact  rested  on  the  basis  of  their  ideals.  Neverthe¬ 
less,  Kant  claimed  that  it  was  the  continent  of  truth. 

As  Columbus  in  his  quest,  so  Kant  stood  merely 
upon  some  outlying  island,  or  at  best  only  on  some 
projecting  promontory  of  the  continent  that  he  had 
discovered.  Yet  he  was  its  discoverer  none  the  less. 
The  statement  that  I  made  of  the  assumptions  and 
implications  involved  in  the  postulates  of  Kant  may 
serve  as  a  rude  chart  of  the  continent  that  he  discov¬ 
ered.  As  we  have  seen,  he  made  no  exploration  of 
it.  He  set  his  foot  only  upon  a  little  spot  at  its 
outer  edge.  Since  his  day  it  has  become  thickly 
populated.  There  is  not  a  tract  recognized  in  my 
rude  chart  that  has  not  been  built  upon.  Jacobi,  for 
instance,  preempted  the  region  of  pure  faith.  Some, 
like  Feuerbach  and  Lange,  have  accepted  the  thought 
of  the  subjective  nature  of  religion,  and  have  reared 
fortresses  upon  it,  from  which  they  have  waged  war 
upon  those  who  accept  its  objective  truth,  declaring 
that  no  other  part  of  the  continent  should  be  inhab¬ 
ited,  and  that  except  for  their  little  strongholds,  the 
Kantian  land  should  be  a  desert.  I  will,  however, 


KANT’S  INFLUENCE  IN  THEOLOGY  89 


pass  over  positions  like  these  that  have  little  historic 
value.  I  will  pass  over,  also,  the  attempts  at  the  direct 
embodiment  of  Kant’s  thought  in  a  theological  form. 
Even  Kant’s  own  attempt  at  this  can  be  passed  over 
very  lightly.  It  is  found  in  his  work,  “  Religion 
wholly  within  the  Limits  of  Reason.”  The  work 
is,  of  course,  interesting  and  important  in  the  study 
of  Kant,  but  not,  I  think,  of  any  far-reaching  in¬ 
fluence.  It  seeks  to  some  extent  to  express  the 
most  liberal  thought  in  forms  more  or  less  similar 
to  those  of  the  Orthodox  Theology.  Liberal  think¬ 
ers  forget  sometimes  the  caution  about  putting  new 
wine  into  old  bottles.  They  do  not  realize  that 
the  new  thought  demands  its  own  expression.  In¬ 
stead  of  total  depravity,  Kant  recognizes  in  human 
nature  a  tendency  to  evil.  Instead  of  the  Christ 
suffering  for  the  sins  of  man  and  thus  accomplish¬ 
ing  man’s  redemption,  with  Kant  man  is  redeemed 
by  the  suffering  of  his  own  better  nature.  Perhaps 
the  thought  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  as  brought 
out  in  this  work  has  proved  as  fruitful  as  anything 
else  that  it  contains. 

Leaving  less  important  considerations,  we  will  pass 
at  once  to  the  examination  of  Kant’s  influence  in 
later  and  larger  theological  developments.  Modern 
theology  may  be  said  to  have  its  beginning  in  the 
contrasted  works  of  Hegel  and  Schleiermacher. 
These  two  great  figures  may  be  called  the  pillars  of 
Hercules,  through  which  entrance  was  made  into  the 
broad  ocean  of  modern  theological  speculation.  No 
theological  work  written  since  their  day,  so  far  as  it 
has  been  really  living,  has  failed  to  receive  some  im¬ 
press  from  one  or  both  of  these  controlling  spirits. 

It  is  a  familiar  fact  that  Hegel  constructed  his  sys- 


90 


ESSAYS 


tem  within  the  lines  drawn  by  Kant.  His  theology 
was  one  with  his  philosophy  ;  thus  what  is  true  of 
the  one  is  also  true  of  the  other.  While  he  insisted 
upon  the  fundamental  importance  of  thought  in  oppo¬ 
sition  to  Schleiermacher,  who  gave  the  primacy  to 
feeling,  the  feeling  of  which  he  spoke  slightingly  was 
raw  or  undeveloped  feeling.  He  thought  little  of  the 
faith  upon  which  Jacobi  insisted;  but  this  was  not 
because  it  was  faith,  but  because  it  was  undeveloped 
faith.  It  might  be  said  that  Hegel’s  whole  system 
rested  upon  faith  ;  or,  rather,  that  it  was  an  expan¬ 
sion  or  a  construction  of  faith.  I  mean  by  this  that 
it  did  not  rest  upon  proofs.  The  time-honored  argu¬ 
ments  were  either  ignored,  or  else,  like  the  ontologi¬ 
cal  proof,  were  so  transformed  as  wholly  to  change 
their  nature.  The  system  of  Hegel  was  self-support¬ 
ing.  Its  strength  was  in  the  harmony  of  the  parts 
and  the  perfection  of  the  result.  It  is  said  that 
Giotto,  failing  to  find  the  friend  whom  he  sought, 
left,  instead  of  his  name,  a  circle  drawn  as  perfectly 
as  only  he  could  draw  it.  The  system  of  Hegel  was 
such  a  perfect  circle.  It  carried  the  evidence  of  its 
truth  within  itself.  It  showed  that  a  philosopher  had 
been  with  us.  A  system  so  self-completing  must,  it 
was  thought,  be  true.  Thus,  the  acceptance  was  the 
result  of  a  more  or  less  conscious  estimate  of  worth. 
Though  apparently  so  wholly  foreign  to  the  method 
of  Kant,  it  may  be  said  to  be  a  structure  reared  upon 
the  continent  which  Kant  discovered. 

In  like  manner,  nothing  could  seem  at  first  sight 
more  foreign  to  the  thought  of  Kant  than  the  sys¬ 
tem  of  Schleiermacher.  At  one  point,  indeed,  the 
work  of  Schleiermacher  and  that  of  Kant  obviously 
coincided.  Schleiermacher  accepted  the  intellectual 


KANT’S  INFLUENCE  IN  THEOLOGY 


9i 


agnosticism  of  Kant.  He  recognized  the  Absolute, 
it  is  true,  as  Kant  did  not,  but  it  was  an  unknowable 
Absolute. 

When  we  reach  the  positive  side  of  the  system  of 
Schleiermacher,  it  might  seem  to  be  as  much  opposed 
to  that  of  Kant  as  the  torrid  zone  is  to  the  frigid. 
He  spoke  with  respect  of  Kant,  while  his  words 
glowed  with  enthusiasm  when  he  spoke  of  Spinoza. 
Kant’s  religion  was  awful  through  the  stern  sublimity 
of  the  moral  law.  The  religion  of  Schleiermacher 
was  aesthetic  rather  than  moral.  His  language  in 
his  earlier  presentation  was  sometimes  almost  volup¬ 
tuous.  Religion  in  this  presentation  was  the  music 
to  which  life  moved,  and  was  hardly  of  the  nature 
of  martial  music.  In  the  later  development  of  his 
thought,  religion,  instead  of  involving  a  call  to  duty, 
consisted  wholly  in  the  sense  of  absolute  dependence. 
This  had  a  place  for  duty,  but  duty  was  evidently 
not  its  most  prominent  element.  Take  the  definite 
system  of  Kant  precisely  as  it  was  put  forward  by 
him,  and  the  idea  that  the  system  of  Schleiermacher 
in  its  positive  aspects  was  an  outgrowth  from  his 
thought  might  seem  absurd. 

When,  however,  we  look  at  the  general  meaning 
of  Kant’s  position  as  I  have  already  presented  it,  we 
see  that  the  theology  of  Schleiermacher  also  has  a 
place  in  the  continent  that  was  discovered  by  Kant. 
With  Schleiermacher  there  is  no  basis  of  argument.1 

1  Schleiermacher  says,  quite  in  the  spirit  of  Kant  and  the  Neo- 
Kantians,  “Were  religion  really  the  highest  knowledge,  the  scien¬ 
tific  method  alone  would  be  suitable  for  its  extension,  and  religion 
could  be  acquired  by  study,  a  thing  not  hitherto  asserted.  Philoso¬ 
phy  would  be  the  first  round  in  the  ladder.  The  religion  of  the 
Christian  laity  would  as  tt'uttis  be  an  imperfect  way  of  having  the 
highest  knowledge,  and  theology  as  yvaxns  would  be  the  perfect  way, 


92 


ESSAYS 


Religion  exists  in  feeling,  and  the  feeling  is  its  own 
justification.  While  there  is  no  formal  reasoning 
from  postulates,  it  is  evidently  the  measure  of  worth 
which  is  the  measure  of  belief.  In  striking  accord 
with  the  method  of  Kant,  nothing  enters  into  the 
theology  of  Schleiermacher  that  does  not  stand  in 
direct  relation  with  the  religious  feeling,  that  is  not 
in  fact  a  projection  from  this.  In  the  later  develop¬ 
ment  of  his  thought  it  is  the  sense  of  absolute  de¬ 
pendence  that  constitutes  religion  ;  and  theology,  as 
he  develops  it,  represents  simply  one  and  another 
aspect  of  this  absolute  dependence.  Any  doctrine 
that  does  not  conform  to  this,  or  that  cannot  be 
forced  into  conformity  with  it,  is  cast  aside.  There 
is  very  little  similarity  between  the  sense  of  depend¬ 
ence  of  Schleiermacher  and  the  sense  of  moral  obli¬ 
gation  of  Kant ;  but  both  systems  rest  upon  feeling ; 
both  exclude  whatever  is  not  vital  with  the  soul’s 
life ;  both,  as  far  as  their  basis  goes,  are  purely  sub¬ 
jective,  and  both  reject  all  help  from  the  intellect. 
Schleiermacher  thus  built  upon  the  land  that  Kant 
had  discovered. 

It  is,  however,  in  the  later  development  of  German 
theology  that  the  principles  of  Kant  are  most  directly 
and  consciously  applied.  The  application  of  which 
I  speak  is  made  by  the  theologians  who  form  what  is 
known  as  the  school  of  Ritschl.  This  group  is  bound 
together  somewhat  loosely.  Its  outline  is  vague.  Its 
members  differ  on  various  points  among  themselves, 
and  stand  at  a  greater  or  less  distance  from  the  posi- 

and  stand  at  the  top,  and  no  one  of  the  three  stages  would  be  con¬ 
sistent  with  the  other  two.  This  I  cannot  at  all  accept ;  therefore  I 
cannot  hold  religion  to  be  the  highest  knowledge,  or,  indeed,  know¬ 
ledge  at  all.” — Reden ,  note  i  to  the  second  Rede. 


KANT’S  INFLUENCE  IN  THEOLOGY 


93 


tion  of  Ritschl ;  but  in  one  point  they  all  agree.  They 
unite  in  rejecting  argumentation  or  philosophy  as 
having  anything  to  do  with  the  foundation  of  belief. 
Belief  rests  merely  upon  the  recognition  of  the  worth 
of  that  which  is  believed.  For  those  of  the  group 
who  stand  nearest  to  Ritschl,  as  for  Ritschl  himself, 
the  one  and  only  thing  that  has  such  positive  worth 
to  the  soul  as  to  command  its  absolute  and  unques¬ 
tioning  acceptance  is  the  revelation  of  God  in  Christ, 
especially  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  as  founded  by 
him.  The  acceptance  of  this  revelation  does  not  de¬ 
pend  upon  miracles  or  upon  conformity  to  prophecy, 
but  simply  and  solely  upon  the  divinity  manifested  in 
Jesus,  and  the  fullness  with  which  this  Kingdom  of 
Heaven  satisfies  the  needs  of  men.  To  a  critic  who 
objected  that  he  could  not  thus  trust  to  Jesus  unless 
he  first  knew  that  he  was  the  Son  of  God  it  is  an¬ 
swered  in  effect,  —  “You  cannot  accept  the  picture 
without  the  written  inscription  under  it ;  but  how  are 
you  going  to  be  sure  that  the  inscription  can  be  be¬ 
lieved?  ”  Elements  that  the  church  has  been  in  the 
habit  of  dwelling  upon  in  its  thought  of  Jesus  have 
little  or  no  place  with  these  theologians.  Of  his  pre¬ 
existent  glory  they  say  little  or  nothing.  This  has 
no  relation  to  the  actual  religious  life  of  the  Chris¬ 
tian  ;  and,  as  with  Schleiermacher  and  with  Kant, 
nothing  has  a  place  in  their  theology  that  does  not 
stand  in  essential  relation  to  this. 

On  the  other  hand  the  element  of  mysticism  is 
ruled  out  as  sternly  as  philosophy.  God  is  known 
only  as  He  is  revealed  in  Christ ;  but  with  this  there 
is  nothing  of  that  mystical  relation  to  Christ  that  has 
been  so  prominent  in  many  Catholic  saints.  The 
individual  Christian  has  no  private  methods  of  reach 


94 


ESSAYS 


ing  truth.  The  Christian’s  walk  with  God  is  walking 
in  the  presence  of  the  light  of  the  revelation  that  was 
in  Christ.  Neither  has  the  individual  Christian  any 
private  relation  to  God.  It  is  as  a  member  of  the 
church  which  Christ  founded  that  he  is  a  child  of 
God.  Jesus  was  in  a  double  but  harmonious  sense 
a  founder.  He  founded  the  church  that  bears  his 
name.  He  established  also  upon  earth  the  Kingdom 
of  God.  The  former  is  a  religious  organization.  The 
latter  is  an  ethical  fellowship.  The  Christian  belongs 
to  both,  for  the  two  represent  the  same  thing  from 
different  points  of  view. 

From  what  has  been  said  may  appear  the  wonder¬ 
ful  mingling  of  breadth  and  narrowness  in  these  theo¬ 
logians.  No  questions  of  philosophy,  no  results  of 
science,  no  claims  of  the  higher  criticism  can  disturb 
them.  Ritschl  believed  in  the  divinity  of  Christ 
simply  because  he  overcame  the  world,  and  thereby 
showed  himself  its  master.  No  criticism  can  affect 
the  manifestation  of  this  divine  personality,  and  what 
does  not  affect  it  does  not  touch  the  basis  of  Chris¬ 
tian  faith.  One  of  these  writers  reproaches  the 
church  with  its  undignified  and  unsatisfactory  rela¬ 
tion  to  Biblical  criticism.  It  has  fought  it  step  by 
step,  but  has  yielded  position  after  position  to  its 
irresistible  advance.  Another,  though  believing  that 
John  was  the  author  of  the  Fourth  Gospel,  says  that 
practically  it  is  no  matter  who  wrote  it.  In  respect 
then  to  science  and  to  criticism  the  Ritschlian  theo¬ 
logy  is  as  broad  as  that  of  the  most  liberal  Christian. 
In  other  respects  its  most  characteristic  representa¬ 
tives  are  as  narrow  as  the  narrowest  sect  of  the 
Orthodox.  Man  is,  as  I  have  said,  a  child  of  God 
only  through  his  relation  to  Christ  and  through  mem- 


KANT’S  INFLUENCE  IN  THEOLOGY 


95 


bership  in  his  church.  Little  is  said  of  the  fate  of 
the  rest  of  mankind.  In  one  place  at  least  annihi¬ 
lation  is  suggested.  Christianity  is  a  sudden  and 
unmediated  irruption  into  the  world.  It  stands  in 
no  relation  with  past  history,  except  so  far  as  in  the 
Roman  Empire,  for  instance,  the  world  was  prepared 
for  its  reception.  It  stands  in  no  relation  with  any¬ 
thing  that  can  be  called  natural  religion.  To  trust 
to  this  in  any  degree,  as  to  trust  to  philosophy  in  the 
slightest  degree,  is  heathenish.  Any  merely  theo¬ 
retical  belief  is  heathenish.  The  recognition  of  the 
divine  helpfulness  of  Christ  and  his  church  in  con¬ 
nection  with  human  needs  constitutes  the  whole  basis 
and  completion  of  Christianity. 

This  school  represents  the  most  living  and  impor¬ 
tant  movement  in  the  later  German  theology.  It  is 
making  rapid  advance.  Harnack  is  perhaps  its  most 
widely  known  representative  outside  its  founder. 
There  are  differences  in  the  views  even  of  those  who 
are  most  completely  identified  with  it.  Its  most  pro¬ 
minent  defenders  are  Kaftan  and  Hermann  ;  it  is  to 
these  writers  in  connection  with  Ritschl  himself  that 
I  have  chiefly  referred.  There  are  other  writers  who 
accept  the  fundamental  principles  of  the  school,  the 
rejection  of  philosophy  and  the  acceptance  of  the 
sense  of  worth  ( werthurtheil )  as  the  only  basis  and 
guide  of  religious  faith,  but  who  avoid  the  narrow¬ 
ness  of  which  I  have  spoken.  The  most  important 
of  these  writers  are,  so  far  as  I  know,  Bender  and 
Siebeck.  Bender’s  theology  is  very  broad,  but  it 
has  a  certain  morbid  element  in  that  it  finds  the 
essence  of  Christianity  in  the  hope  and  promise  of  a 
future  life  of  ethical  completeness  and  blessedness. 
In  this  he  is  wholly  in  accord  with  Kant.  Siebeck’s 


96 


ESSAYS 


“  Philosophy  of  Religion  ”  seems  to  me  the  broadest, 
the  sanest,  and  the  most  generally  helpful  outcome 
of  the  movement.  Its  literature  is,  however,  im¬ 
mense,  and  I  cannot  pretend  to  have  exhausted  it. 

Though,  at  first  sight,  the  view  that  finds  the  only 
basis  of  faith  in  the  werthurtheil  seems  to  knock 
away  the  foundations  of  religion,  yet  a  closer  exam¬ 
ination  would  show  that  this  is  the  essential  thing  in 
all  our  reasonings  in  regard  to  the  matter.  We  have 
a  fine  example  of  it  in  the  often-quoted  couplet  of 
Browning :  — 

“  A  loving  worm  within  its  clod 
Were  diviner  than  a  loveless  god.” 

This  for  Browning  and  his  sympathetic  readers  set¬ 
tles  the  question.  There  is  perhaps  no  conscious 
reasoning  that  what  is  most  divine  in  its  nature  must 
be  most  real  in  fact.  The  assumption  of  truth  is 
bound  up  with  the  perception  of  worth. 

At  the  present  day  comparatively  little  use  is  made 
of  the  argument  for  design  in  its  older  form.  The 
doctrine  of  Final  Causation  in  its  larger  sense  is  more 
dwelt  upon  than  the  argument  of  Causation.  The 
fact  that  in  its  history  the  world  presses  on  to  the 
evolution  of  spirit  and  to  ever  higher  and  higher 
forms  of  the  spiritual  life  is  taken  as  the  best  indica¬ 
tion  of  the  nature  of  the  power  that  is  working  in 
and  through  the  universe  ;  but  to  one  to  whom  spirit 
was  worth  no  more  than  matter,  and  the  intellectual 
and  moral  life  had  no  more  value  than  the  shrewd¬ 
ness  of  self-seeking  such  as  even  the  animal  may 
sometimes  show  —  such  reasoning  would  have  no 
significance. 

Again,  we  say  that  we  cannot  conceive  of  the 
world  except  as  a  manifestation  of  spirit.  If  one 


KANT’S  INFLUENCE  IN  THEOLOGY 


97 


refuses  to  make  such  a  postulate  and  obstinately 
rests  in  agnosticism,  what  further  is  to  be  said  ? 
Religious  faith  furnishes  the  key  which  more  fully 
than  anything  else  fits  the  locks  of  the  world’s 
mysteries.  It  furnishes  the  conditions  under  which 
the  life  of  man  may  reach  its  fullest  and  most  har¬ 
monious  development.  On  these  facts  rests  largely 
its  claim  to  acceptance. 

The  number  is  growing  continually  smaller  of  those 
who  accept  the  teaching  of  Jesus  on  account  of  the 
miracles  that  are  ascribed  to  him.  This  teaching  is 
more  and  more  accepted  as  divine  on  account  of  the 
divinity  that  is  in  it.  Such  considerations  as  these 
show  the  place  in  our  thought  of  the  estimate  of 
worth. 

We  owe  the  theologians  of  whom  I  have  spoken 
our  gratitude  for  bringing  this  aspect  of  religion  into 
prominence.  Their  mistake  is  in  denying  any  im¬ 
portance  to  other  elements.  When  Christianity  is 
wholly  separated  from  philosophy,  from  the  great 
movements  of  history,  and  from  so-called  natural 
religion,  it  becomes  somewhat  unreal  and  ghostly. 
All  these  elements  are  helpful,  though  the  final  word 
must  be  left  to  faith.  They  give  a  robustness  to 
Christianity  that  it  would  lack  without  them.  Thus 
the  mistake  of  Kant  and  those  who  have  traveled  in 
his  track  is  precisely  the  opposite  of  the  one  made 
by  Columbus.  Columbus  thought  he  had  reached 
the  other  side  of  the  continent  from  which  he  sailed, 
but  in  fact  he  had  discovered  a  new  one.  Kant  and 
his  followers  have  believed  that  they  had  discovered 
and  settled  upon  a  wholly  new  continent.  What 
they  have  really  done  is  to  take  possession  of  the 
other  side  of  that  on  which  the  religions  of  the  world 


9^ 


ESSAYS 


and  Christianity  itself  have  found  their  home.  The 
head  and  the  heart  have  always  worked  together  in 
the  founding  and  the  upbuilding  of  religion  ;  and 
they  always  will  thus  work  together  so  long  as  religion 
shall  endure. 


V 


“BEYOND  GOOD  AND  EVIL” 

A  STUDY  OF  THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  FRIEDRICH 

NIETZSCHE  1 

One  of  the  earliest  chapters  in  the  “Thus  Spake 
Zarathustra,”  2  of  Nietzsche  is  entitled  “  Of  the  Three 
Metamorphoses.”  It  is  so  suggestive  of  the  position 
of  the  author  in  the  development  of  the  world’s 

1  The  Works  of  Friedrich  Nietzsche,  edited  by  Alexander  Tille, 
Ph.D.,  Lecturer  at  the  University  of  Glasgow,  in  ten  volumes  :  Vol¬ 
ume  VIII.,  Thus  Spake  Zarathustra,  a  Book  for  All  and  None, 
translated  by  Alexander  Tille.  Pp.  xxiii,  479.  Volume  X.,  A 
Genealogy  of  Morals,  translated  by  William  A.  Haussmann.  Poems , 
translated  by  John  Gray.  Pp.  xix,  289.  Volume  XI.,  The  Case  of 
Wagner;  The  Antichrist,  etc.,  translated  by  T.  Common.  New 
York  :  The  Macmillan  Company.  London  :  Macmillan  &  Co.,  Lim¬ 
ited.  1896-1897.  These  are  all  the  volumes  of  the  series  as  yet 
published. 

fenseits  von  Gut  und  Bose ,  Vor spiel  enter  Philos  op  hie  der  Zukunft, 
von  Friedrich  Nietzsche,  Sechste  Auflage.  Pp.  v,  273,  viii.  Leipzig: 
Druck  und  Verlag  von  C.  G.  Naumann.  1896. 

Bibliotheque  de  Philosophie  contemporaine,  La  Philosophie  de  Fried¬ 
rich  Nietzsche,  par  Henri  Lichtenberger,  Professeur  adjoint  de  littera- 
ture  etrangere  a  la  Faculte  des  Lettres  de  l’Universite  de  Nancy. 
“Das  schnellste  Thier  das  euch  tragt  zur  Vollkommenheit  ist 
Leiden’’  (Meister  Eckhard).  Deuxieme  edition.  Paris  :  Ancienne 
Librairie,  Germar  Bailliere  et  Cie.,  Felix  Alcan,  Editeur,  108,  Boule¬ 
vard  Saint  Germain.  1898. 

2  The  Zarathustra  of  Nietzsche  is  a  purely  ideal  character,  and  is 
not  intended  to  be  understood  as  representing  in  any  way  the  Zara¬ 
thustra,  or  Zoroaster,  who  is  the  supposed  founder  of  the  Parsi 
religion. 


v 


100 


ESSAYS 


thought  that  some  extracts  from  it  may  well  serve  as 
an  introduction  to  this  essay. 

“  Three  metamorphoses  of  the  spirit  I  declare  unto  you  : 
how  the  spirit  becometh  a  camel,  the  camel  a  lion,  and 
the  lion  at  last  a  child. 

“  There  are  many  things  heavy  for  the  spirit,  the  strong 
spirit  which  is  able  to  bear  the  load  and  in  which  rever¬ 
ence  dwelleth :  its  strength  longeth  for  the  heavy  and 
heaviest. 

“  All  the  heaviest  things  are  taken  upon  itself  by  the 
spirit  that  is  able  to  bear  the  load ;  like  the  camel  which, 
when  it  is  laden,  hasteth  to  the  desert,  the  spirit  hasteth 
to  its  own  desert. 

“  In  the  loneliest  desert,  however,  cometh  the  second 
metamorphosis :  there  the  spirit  becometh  a  lion.  Free¬ 
dom  it  will  take  as  its  prey  and  be  lord  in  its  own  desert. 

“  There  it  seeketh  its  lost  lord :  to  him  and  its  lost  god 
it  seeketh  to  be  a  foe ;  with  the  great  dragon  it  seeketh 
to  contend  for  victory. 

“  What  is  the  great  dragon  which  the  spirit  is  no 
longer  willing  to  call  Lord  and  God  ?  ‘Thou  shalt’  is  the 
name  of  the  great  dragon.  But  the  lion’s  spirit  saith,  ‘  I 
will.’ 

“  ‘  Thou  shalt  ’  besets  his  way  glittering  with  gold,  a 
pangolin,  on  each  scale  there  shineth  golden,  ‘  Thou 
shalt.’  .  .  . 

“Values  a  thousand  years  old  are  shining  on  these 
scales,  and  thus  saith  the  most  powerful  of  all  dragons, 
‘  The  value  of  all  things  is  shining  on  me.’ 

“  ‘  Verily,  there  shall  be  no  more  “  I  will.”  ’  Thus  saith 
the  dragon.  .  .  . 

“  To  create  new  values  —  that  even  the  lion  is  not  able 
to  do:  but  to  create  for  itself  freedom  and  a  holy  Nay 
even  towards  duty  —  therefor,  my  brethren,  the  lion  is  re¬ 
quired.  .  .  . 

“  As  its  holiest  it  once  loved  ‘  Thou  shalt ;  ’  now  it 


“BEYOND  GOOD  AND  EVIL” 


IOI 


must  find  illusion  and  arbitrariness  even  in  the  holiest,  in 
order  to  snatch  freedom  from  its  love  :  the  lion  is  required 
to  seize  that  prey. 

“  But  tell  me,  my  brethren,  what  can  the  child  do 
which  not  even  the  lion  could  ?  Why  must  the  preying 
lion  become  a  child  also  ? 

“  The  child  is  innocence  and  oblivion,  a  new  starting, 
a  play,  a  wheel  rolling  by  itself,  a  prime  motor,  a  holy 
asserting. 

“  Ay,  for  the  play  of  creating,  my  brethren,  a  holy  as¬ 
serting  is  wanted.  It  is  its  own  will  that  the  spirit  now 
willeth.  It  is  its  own  world  that  the  recluse  winneth  for 
himself.” 

In  this  passage  the  author  pictures  in  symbolic 
form  the  three  great  stages  in  the  development  of 
the  spiritual  life  of  man.  They  are  submission,  re¬ 
bellion,  and  spontaneity.  In  the  first  stage  the  great 
virtue  is  obedience  —  obedience  to  law  and  after¬ 
wards  to  duty.  But,  whether  under  the  form  of  law 
or  duty,  religion  stands,  for  the  most  part,  supreme, 
claiming  submission  in  thought  as  well  as  in  life.  In 
order,  however,  that  a  higher  level  may  be  reached, 
there  must  come  denial.  The  authority  to  which 
men  have  bowed  must  be  overthrown.  To  use  a 
favorite  expression  of  Nietzsche,  there  can  be  no  ad¬ 
vance  until  the  old  valuations  have  been  swept  away 
to  give  place  to  new.  In  order  that  the  new  valua¬ 
tions  may  be  accomplished  there  must  be  a  period 
of  negation.  Denials  and  mockeries  must  take  the 
place  of  reverence  and  obedience.  When  the  old 
valuations  have  been  overthrown,  then  the  new  may 
be  set  up  in  their  place.  The  new  are  the  manifesta¬ 
tion  of  freedom,  but  of  a  freedom  that  does  not  know 
itself  as  such.  The  child  does  not  mock  at  tradition, 


102 


ESSAYS 


or,  in  its  sport,  exult  in  being  free.  It  simply  acts 
itself.  So  the  spirit,  in  this  third  stage  of  its  devel¬ 
opment,  simply  asserts  itself  without  the  conscious¬ 
ness  of  self-assertion.  The  old  valuations  are  for¬ 
gotten.  It  naturally  sets  its  own  values  upon  all 
things,  and  takes  itself  and  its  own  valuations  for 
granted. 

If  we  regard  this  parable  as  really  illustrating  the 
spiritual  development  of  the  world,  we  recognize  the 
fact  that  in  these  later  years  many  roaring  lions  of 
negativity  have  been  going  about  seeking  what  they 
may  devour.  We  may  further  accept  Nietzsche  as 
the  king  of  this  sort  of  beasts.  There  may  perhaps 
be  some  comfort  in  the  thought  that  there  are  few 
directions  in  which  denial  can  go  further  than  in 
the  case  of  this  writer.  There  are,  as  we  shall  see 
later,  one  or  two  things  which  he  affirms,  and  in 
behalf  of  which  he  is  ready  to  fight  if  need  be.  On 
the  whole,  however,  we  may  consider  the  work  of 
negation  to  have  been  pretty  thoroughly  accomplished 
by  him. 

He  is,  in  the  first  place,  a  hearty  and  thorough¬ 
going  atheist.  One  of  his  favorite  expressions  is 
“  God  is  dead.”  When  Zarathustra  comes  down 
from  the  mountain  in  order  to  preach  to  men  the 
results  of  his  long  thought,  he  falls  in  with  a  hermit 
who  has  sought  the  wilderness  for  pious  meditation. 
The  hermit  speaks  of  serving  God  and  man.  “  When 
Zarathustra  was  alone,  however,  he  spake  thus  unto 
his  heart  :  ‘  Can  it  actually  be  possible  ?  The  old  saint 
in  his  forest  hath  not  yet  heard  aught  of  God  being 
dead.' 

This  denial  of  the  truth  of  religion  loses  something 
of  its  force  from  the  other  denials  with  which  it  is 


“BEYOND  GOOD  AND  EVIL”  103 

associated.  We  are  in  the  habit  of  seeing  those  who, 
with  the  most  serious  .consciousness  of  what  they  are 
doing,  reject  religion,  vying  with  Christianity  itself  in 
insisting  upon  the  authority  of  moral  truth.  They 
claim  to  be  putting  morality  and  virtue  upon  a  more 
stable  foundation  than  religion  is  able  to  do.  With 
Nietzsche  all  this  is  different.  The  “  Thou  shalt  ” 
and  “  Thou  shalt  not  ”  of  the  moral  law  are  but  the 
glittering  scales  of  the  dragon  against  whom  he 
makes  war.  The  so-called  Christian  virtues,  he 
insists,  are  the  virtues  of  slaves.  Even  Schopen¬ 
hauer,  who  finds  the  ideal  of  virtue  in  compassion 
and  helpful  sympathy,  shows  himself  thereby  little 
better  than  one  of  the  godly.  Philosophy  fares  with 
Nietzsche  no  better  than  religion  and  ethics.  It  is, 
in  fact,  a  kind  of  religion.  Of  science  he  speaks,  if 
possible,  with  even  more  contempt.  The  poets,  he 
says  somewhere,  are  the  great  pessimists,  because 
they  feel  forced  to  create  a  new  world  for  themselves 
out  of  their  own  imaginations.  Thus  we  have  a  com¬ 
plete  rejection  of  almost  all  that  men  have  been 
accustomed  to  revere. 

All  these  sweeping  denials  may  seem  to  us  simply 
absurd.  It  is  easy  to  say  that  the  man  was  crazy. 
In  proof  of  this,  one  may  point  to  the  insanity  which 
actually  came  upon  him  in  later  life.  One  may, 
indeed,  say  with  Nordau,  though  the  statement  would 
not  be  true,  that  his  works  were  written  between  his 
periods  of  sojourn  in  a  madhouse.  Even  if  we  should 
not  insist  that  the  utterances  of  Nietzsche  are  the 
ravings  of  a  madman,  it  is  easy  to  dismiss  him  from 
our  thought  as  unbalanced  and  conceited  and  thus 
as  a  negligible  quantity.  When,  however,  we  have 
got  rid  of  him,  what  are  we  going  to  do  with  the 


104 


ESSAYS 


multitude  of  his  readers  ?  Here,  for  instance,  we 
have  a  translation  of  his  works  announced  by  the 
Macmillan  Company  in  ten  substantial  and  not  inex¬ 
pensive  volumes ;  and  the  name  of  Macmillan  is  gen¬ 
erally  accepted  as  signifying  that  the  books  on  which 
it  appears  have  some  good  claim  upon  the  attention 
of  the  world.  This  translation  is  edited  by  a  lecturer 
in  —  of  all  places  in  the  world  —  a  Scotch  university. 
A  great  mass  of  literature  has  grown  up  around  the 
works  of  Nietzsche,  favoring  or  opposing.  We  read 
even  of  the  “Nietzsche  archives”  in  some  German 
city.  Prominent  in  this  mass  of  literature  is  the 
work  of  Professor  Lichtenberger  that  I  have  asso¬ 
ciated  with  this  article.  In  this  book  the  author, 
without  formally  declaring  himself  a  disciple  of 
Nietzsche,  gives  a  careful  and  sympathetic  exposi¬ 
tion  of  his  doctrines.  In  a  word,  Nietzsche  has  be¬ 
come  a  fad,  the  object  of  a  cult. 

As  I  have  said,  we  may  dispose  of  him,  but  what 
are  we  to  do  with  all  these  that  he  has  gathered  about 
him  ?  They  are  not  all  wanderers  escaped  from  a 
madhouse.  We  may  criticise  their  taste  and  their 
judgment,  but  we  should  hardly  venture  to  call  them 
insane.  Certainly,  in  view  of  this  widespread  inter¬ 
est,  Nietzsche  is  no  longer  a  negligible  quantity.  It 
is  worth  while  to  ask  seriously  what  is  the  nature 
and  ground  of  the  teaching  that  he  offers  to  the 
world,  and  what  is  the  source  of  his  influence. 

Beginning  with  his  atheism,  and  looking  at  it  more 
carefully,  we  notice  that  it  is  supported  by  little  argu¬ 
ment.  When  he  exclaims  “  God  is  dead,”  he  means 
simply  that  religion  is  dead.  He  refers  the  reader  to 
what  seems  to  him  to  be  one  of  the  obvious  charac¬ 
teristics  of  the  time.  He  appeals  to  the  fact  that  re- 


“BEYOND  GOOD  AND  EVIL” 


105 


ligion  is  no  longer  the  power  that  it  was  in  the  hearts 
and  lives  of  men.  Nietzsche’s  cry  of  unbelief  is  a  glad 
and  triumphant  one ;  but  the  loud  laughter  of  Zara- 
thustra  was  less  that  of  mockery  than  that  of  joy.  In¬ 
deed,  when  we  think  of  the  dogmas  that  have  marked 
the  darkest  ages  of  Christian  history,  the  endless 
and  measureless  suffering  which  was  believed  to  be 
the  unavoidable  doom  of  the  great  majority  of  men, 
a  doom  of  which  one  could  hardly  bear  to  think,  did 
it  threaten  one  man  alone  —  when  we  think  of  the 
wrench  upon  the  noblest  faculties  of  human  nature 
which  was  needed  in  order  that  the  soul  should 
love  or  worship,  or  believe  that  it  loved  and  wor¬ 
shiped,  the  source  from  which  this  mighty  horror 
took  its  rise,  and  the  unseemly  shifts  that  were  made 
to  win  the  favor  of  this  power,  no  words  of  exulta¬ 
tion  are  too  strong  to  express  joy  in  the  fact  that 
this  shadow  has  passed  away  from  the  heavens  and 
the  earth.  One  might  join  in  the  laugh  of  Zarathus- 
tra  at  the  thought  that  this  God  is  dead.  Nietzsche 
had  heard  indeed  of  the  milder  God  of  the  gentler 
creeds  ;  but  the  terrible  being  of  which  we  have 
spoken  was  to  him  the  real  God.  It  was  the  ideal  of 
this  God  which  had  been  stamped  upon  his  mind. 
The  milder  God  was  to  him  simply  a  God  that  was 
fading  out.  It  was  the  dying  God.  Of  the  living 
God  who  rules  the  world,  not  arbitrarily,  from  with¬ 
out,  but  as  the  life  of  all  that  live,  the  strength 
of  all  that  are  strong,  and  the  upholder  of  the  weak, 
of  this  God  he  seems  never  to  have  heard,  or  having 
heard  not  to  have  comprehended  or  believed. 

So  far  as  conscious  reasoning  furnished  support  to 
the  atheism  of  Nietzsche,  we  must  look  for  it  in  con¬ 
nection  with  his  treatment  of  philosophy.  Philoso- 


io6 


ESSAYS 


phy  was  with  him,  as  we  have  already  seen,  only 
another  kind  of  religion.  It  makes  the  same  assump¬ 
tion  that  religion  makes.  It  assumes  that  there  is 
an  absolute  principle  or  an  absolute  truth.  This  ab¬ 
solute  truth  is  what  the  philosopher  seeks  in  his 
quest,  and  what  he  announces  in  his  teaching.  It  is 
this  recognition  of  an  Absolute  that  allies  philosophy 
with  religion.  The  Absolute  of  the  philosopher  and 
the  God  of  Religion  are  different  forms  of  the  same 
thing. 

In  opposition  to  such  assumptions  Nietzsche  insists 
that  for  man,  at  least,  there  is  and  can  be  no  Abso¬ 
lute.  Man  is  a  creature  of  instincts.  His  instincts 
practically  make  up  his  life.  He  has  instincts  of 
belief.  Beyond  these  instincts  he  cannot  pass. 
What  then  becomes  of  the  Absolute  of  which  there 
has  been  so  much  talk  —  of  the  absolute  Being,  or 
of  the  absolute  Truth  ?  There  can  be  no  real  proof 
of  anything.  A  man  believes  simply  what  it  is  his 
nature  to  believe.  What  is  suited  to  one  may  not 
be  suited  to  another.  Each  must  take  what  belongs 
to  him.  It  is  obvious  that  from  this  point  of  view 
Nietzsche’s  own  teaching  would  lose  all  coercing 
power.  Indeed,  he  would  hardly  claim  such  author¬ 
ity  for  it.  What  we  have  in  his  teaching  is  simply 
the  statement  of  the  way  in  which  things  look  to 
him.  Their  only  influence  over  others  must  be  by 
way  of  suggestion.  If  his  view  commends  itself  to 
them  they  will  accept  it  ;  if  not  they  will  reject  it. 
I  am  not,  however,  disposed  to  press  this  argumentum 
ad hominem.  For  one,  I  heartily  accept  the  premises 
of  Nietzsche’s  reasoning.  In  fact,  I  have  more  than 
once  insisted  upon  the  same.1  The  result,  however, 

1  As  in  the  foregoing  essay  entitled  “  Reason  in  Religion,”  and  in 


“BEYOND  GOOD  AND  EVIL” 


107 


which  Nietzsche  practically  draws  from  these  pre¬ 
mises  is  wholly  unwarranted.  His  reasoning  is  at 
the  first  sight  plausible,  and  seems  to  leave  matters  of 
belief  and  thought  in  hopeless  confusion  ;  but  when 
we  look  at  the  matter  more  closely  this  confusion 
disappears.  It  really  makes  no  difference  whether 
we  speak  of  an  absolute  truth  or  of  an  absolute  ne¬ 
cessity  of  belief.  What  we  cannot  help  believing  we 
cannot  help  regarding  as  true.  It  is  idle  to  say  of 
a  proposition  that  it  is  simply  our  belief,  but  that  we 
do  not  know  whether  or  not  it  is  true.  If  we  cannot 
help  believing  anything  we  cannot  really  raise  the 
question  whether  it  is  true  or  not.  Take,  for  instance, 
the  Law  of  Contradiction.  This  underlies  and  works 
through  all  our  thinking.  It  implies  a  necessity  of 
thought.  It  is  idle  for  us  to  say  that,  because  it  is 
merely  a  necessity  of  thought,  we  do  not  know 
whether  or  not  it  has  validity  in  regard  to  other  facts 
of  the  universe.  When  we  say  this  we  speak  words 
without  meaning.  In  regard  to  any  definite  case  of 
the  application  of  this  law  we  cannot  admit  even 
the  thought  of  the  possibility  that  it  may  not  have 
validity,  any  more  than  we  can  admit  the  possibility 
of  the  thought  that,  because  two  and  two  seem  to  us 
to  make  four,  it  does  not  follow  that,  in  point  of  fact, 
they  may  not  make  something  very  different.  In¬ 
deed,  the  reasoning  by  which  the  purely  subjective 
character  of  the  Law  of  Contradiction  is  insisted  on 
rests  upon  this  very  law.  What  the  philosophers 
call  an  absolute  truth  we  may  then  call  an  ultimate 
necessity  of  thought.  The  latter  expression  may 
perhaps,  logically  speaking,  be  the  more  justifi- 

The  Science  of  Thought,  in  which  work  this  principle  is  accepted  as 
fundamental. 


io8 


ESSAYS 


able  ;  but  practically  the  two  forms  of  speech  mean 
the  same  thing.  To  say  that  we  have  simply  in¬ 
stincts  of  belief  does  not  leave  us  any  freer  than  the 
doctrine  of  absolute  truth.  The  Law  of  Contradic¬ 
tion  holds  our  thought  in  as  firm  a  grip  as  any  ob¬ 
jective  truth  could  do  of  which  the  philosophers  and 
the  theologians  have  ever  spoken. 

Science  fares  no  better  at  the  hands  of  Nietzsche 
than  philosophy  and  religion.  Like  them  it  has  its 
Absolute.  He  tells  us  that  science  has  also  its  god, 
and  that  to  no  divinity  which  men  have  worshiped 
have  such  costly  offerings  been  made.  They  have 
sacrificed  to  it  their  noblest  instincts.  They  have  sac¬ 
rificed  to  it  God  himself.  But  what,  asks  Nietzsche, 
is  truth  that  we  should  love  and  worship  it  for  its 
own  sake  ? 

Atheism  under  one  form  or  another  is  no  new 
thing.  It  was  as  confident  of  itself  in  the  days  of 
the  Psalmist  as  to-day.  Contempt  for  philosophy  is 
no  new  thing.  Some  of  our  most  noted  theologians 
are  teaching  this  contempt.  But  to  deny  the  ideals 
of  morality  which  have  commanded  the  reverence  if 
not  the  obedience  of  men  for  so  many  ages  is  some¬ 
thing  different.  To  say  that  the  “  Christian  virtues  ” 
are  the  virtues  of  slaves  is  indeed  to  affirm  something 
startling. 

To  understand  the  ethical  theory  of  Nietzsche  we 
must  glance  at  his  theory  of  human  nature.  He 
criticises  and  rejects  the  view  of  Schopenhauer,  ac¬ 
cording  to  which  the  fundamental  reality  is  the  “  will 
to  be.”  It  is  not  the  will  to  be,  said  Nietzsche ;  it  is 
the  will  to  exercise  power.  This  may  at  bottom  not 
be  so  very  different  from  the  meaning  of  Schopen¬ 
hauer,  for  the  will  to  be  cannot  manifest  itself  ab- 


“  BEYOND  GOOD  AND  EVIL” 


109 


stractly.  The  will  always  wills  something.  It  seeks 
ever  to  gain  some  end,  to  accomplish  some  result. 
The  form  of  speech  used  by  Nietzsche,  however, 
serves  admirably  to  emphasize  what  is  to  him  the  one 
important  thing  in  life.  The  fundamental  nature  of 
man  is  self-assertion.  This  self-assertion  manifests 
itself  not*merely  in  maintaining  a  position,  in  repell¬ 
ing  attacks  and  invasions.  It  manifests  itself  rather 
in  mastery.  The  end  towards  which  the  nature  of 
man,  like  the  nature  of  everything  else,  presses  is 
power.  Man  seeks  power  over  the  world  and,  above 
all,  power  over  other  men.  The  truest  man  is  he 
who  seeks  power  with  the  firmest  will  and  with  the 
least  consideration  of  anything  besides. 

This  view  of  the  real  and  ideal  nature  of  man  is 
the  source  of  the  special  contempt  that  Nietzsche 
pours  upon  science  and  its  votaries.  The  truest  man 
of  science,  according  to  him,  is  the  man  who  most 
successfully  depersonalizes  himself.  He  makes  of 
himself  a  mere  mirror  in  which  the  world  is  reflected. 
Nothing  of  himself  must  be  left  to  mar  the  perfect 
fidelity  of  the  reflection.  He  becomes,  says  Nietz¬ 
sche,  with  a  supreme  disregard  for  facts,  “  a  man 
that  no  woman  would  love.” 

For  a  similar  reason  scorn  is  felt  for  the  teaching 
that  insists  upon  self-forgetfulness  and  self-surrender. 
Asceticism  and  whatever  looks  in  the  direction  of 
asceticism  are  regarded  as  standing  in  direct  opposi¬ 
tion  to  the  true  development  of  the  essential  nature 
of  man.  “Right”  and  “wrong”  exist  according  to 
this  view  only  after  the  establishment  of  Law.  “To 
speak  of  right  and  wrong  in  itself  is  altogether  mean¬ 
ingless.  In  itself  the  act  of  injuring,  violating,  ex¬ 
ploiting,  destroying,  can,  of  course,  not  be  anything 


I  10 


ESSAYS 


‘wrong,’  inasmuch  as  life  essentially ,  that  is  in  its 
fundamental  functions,  works  injury,  violation,  ex¬ 
ploitation,  and  destruction,  and  cannot  be  conceived 
otherwise.”  “A  legal  order  .  .  .  which  would  enforce 
the  principle  that  every  will  should  treat  every  other 
will  as  its  equal  — such  an  order  would  be  a  principle 
hostile  to  life ,  tending  to  destroy  and  disintegrate 
life  —  an  outrage  upon  the  future  of  man,  a  sign  of 
languor,  a  byway  to  the  nothing.”  Practically  speak¬ 
ing,  the  great  mass  of  men  exist  for  the  benefit  of 
the  few.  It  is  foolish  to  talk  of  elevating  the  labor¬ 
ing  classes  or  to  waste  sympathy  on  them.  One 
should,  of  course,  incidentally  regard  their  comfort, 
but  they  are  there,  like  the  chorus  of  a  play,  as  a 
background  for  the  chief  actors.  The  great  man  of 
modern  time  was  Napoleon.  Nietzsche  has  a  good 
word  even  for  Caesar  Borgia. 

Nietzsche  recognized  two  types  of  morals.  One 
was  the  virtue  of  the  warrior,  and  of  the  dominant 
caste.  It  recognized  bravery  on  the  field,  and  the 
consideration  which  was  due  from  one  member  of 
the  ruling  race  to  another  —  and  nothing  more.  The 
other  type  was  the  virtue  of  slaves.  By  this  is  meant 
not  so  much  the  virtue  practiced  by  slaves  as  that 
which  slaves  would  most  naturally  enjoin  upon  those 
above  them.  When  Nietzsche  calls  the  “  Christian 
virtues  ”  the  virtues  of  slaves,  he  means  to  be  taken 
literally.  Slaves  preached  to  their  masters  compas¬ 
sion,  kindness,  and  forgiveness ;  first,  in  order  to  ob¬ 
tain  better  treatment  for  themselves,  and  then  as  a 
means  of  revenge.  The  Jews  were  a  race  of  slaves. 
The  teachings  of  Jesus  were  the  culmination  of  the 
Jewish  development.  They  were  the  expression  of 
the  sublime  vindictiveness  of  the  Jew.  It  belongs 


“BEYOND  GOOD  AND  EVIL” 


1 1 1 


“  to  the  secret  black  art  of  truly  grand  politics  of 
vengeance  .  .  .  that  Israel  itself  should  deny  and 
crucify  before  all  the  world  the  proper  tool  of  its 
vengeance,  so  that  all  its  enemies  should  ‘  bite  at  this 
bait.’  ”  This  is  called  the  means  of  vengeance  be¬ 
cause  these  teachings  sapped  the  spirit  and  energy 
of  the  conquering  world. 

Nietzsche  attempted  to  support  his  theory  of  the 
development  of  altruistic  ethics  by  history  and  ety¬ 
mology.  Both  forms  of  argument  have  been  shown 
to  be  without  foundation.  Nordau  calls  attention  to 
the  fact  that  Buddhism,  in  which  the  passive  and 
sympathetic  virtues  are  most  distinctly  set  forth,  was 
the  creation  not  of  a  slave  but  of  a  prince.  Even 
the  editor  of  the  English  edition  of  Nietzsche’s 
works  admits  that  the  etymologies  upon  which  he 
bases  his  philological  argument  are  for  the  most  part 
false.  He  says,  however,  that  the  theory  they  were 
meant  to  support  does  not  therefore  fall  to  the 
ground.  Professor  Lichtenberger  also  maintains  that 
the  weakness  of  the  reasoning  of  Nietzsche  does  not 
take  from  the  value  of  the  result.  It  illustrates  the 
personality  of  the  man  just  as  well,  and  this  is  the 
main  thing.  Notwithstanding  all  this,  if  we  try  to 
take  Nietzsche  at  all  seriously,  we  must  recognize 
the  fact  that  there  is  a  great  difference  between  say¬ 
ing  of  tenderness  and  compassion,  “  These  are  slavish 
virtues”  —  meaning  that  they  are  such  as  slaves 
might  naturally  be  expected  to  urge  —  and  saying 
that  they  are  slavish  virtues  in  the  sense  that  they 
are  the  virtues  which  a  race  of  slaves  actually  im¬ 
posed  upon  the  world.  In  the  one  case  we  have  the 
expression  of  a  mere  individual  opinion  which  we  may 
call  fantastic  or  absurd  ;  and  in  the  other  we  have 


1 12 


ESSAYS 


the  statement  of  a  historic  fact  which  can  be  taken 
only  seriously. 

Whatever  opinion  we  may  form  in  regard  to  the 
matter,  with  Nietzsche  pity  was  one  of  the  great 
weaknesses  of  man,  and  the  cause  of  many  of  the 
evils  of  the  world.  It  has  taken  human  life  out  of 
the  sphere  of  the  struggle  for  existence,  the  battle¬ 
field  in  which  alone  nobility  and  strength  can  be 
developed.  It  is  pity  that  has  kept  alive  what  much 
better  had  perished.  Infirmity  of  body  and  mind 
has  flourished  and  multiplied,  and  has  corrupted  the 
very  springs  of  life.  Further,  pity  is  indelicate.  It 
looks  on  that  from  which  one  should  more  properly 
look  away.  It  invades  the  personality  of  others,  and 
sees  what  had  much  better  be  hidden.  God,  accord¬ 
ing  to  Zarathustra,  died  of  pity.  This  may  mean 
that  it  is  compassion  with  the  suffering  of  the  wdrld 
that  has  made  religious  belief  untenable ;  or,  as  it 
is  more  clearly  stated  in  one  passage,  men  could 
not  bear  the  exposure  to  this  all-penetrating  and  all- 
revealing  compassion,  and  so  they  made  an  end  of 
God.  Pity,  we  are  told,  was  the  last  sin  of  Zara¬ 
thustra.  For  a  moment  the  view  of  the  suffering  of 
the  world  penetrated  his  heart. 

The  worst  thing,  according  to  our  author,  that 
could  happen  to  man  would  be  the  abolition  of  suf¬ 
fering.  The  hero  must  be  strong  to  suffer ;  he  must 
also  be  strong  to  inflict  suffering,  which  is  much 
harder.  In  fact,  men  do  not  suffer  enough,  for  out 
of  suffering  alone  come  manliness  and  heroism.  It 
must  be  admitted  that  Nietzsche  was  not  speaking  of 
something  of  which  he  had  no  personal  knowledge. 
It  was  through  suffering  that  he  learned  to  know  the 
meaning  of  suffering.  He  did  not  look  forward  to  a 


“BEYOND  GOOD  AND  EVIL”  113 

time  in  which  life  should  become  easier.  It  should 
become  rather  more  difficult.  The  ideal  of  life  is  a 
battle  in  which  should  come  defeats  as  well  as  vic¬ 
tories.  It  is  sometimes  said  of  war  that  the  end 
justifies  the  means.  Nietzsche  says  of  it  that  war 
justifies  the  end. 

The  great  evil  of  life  is  its  pettiness.  All  Nietz¬ 
sche’s  powers  of  sarcasm  are  brought  to  bear  upon 
this.  All  the  vials  of  his  contempt  are  poured  upon 
it.  Men’s  virtues  and  their  sins  are  alike  too  small. 
The  prevalence  of  pity  is  one  mark  of  this  pettiness. 
Men’s  idea  of  justice  sprang  from  fear.  It  was  the 
expression  of  the  instinct  of  self-preservation.  Now 
that  men  feel  themselves  safe,  they  are  too  weak  and 
sympathetic  even  to  punish  the  wrong-doer. 

With  all  his  sense  of  the  unavoidable  part  that  is 
played  by  evil  in  the  world,  Nietzsche  is  no  pessimist. 
He  does  not  seek  to  answer  the  question  whether 
life  is  a  blessing  or  a  curse.  In  fact,  we  live,  and  the 
one  thing  for  us  to  do  is  to  make  the  best  of  life. 
This  is  done,  not  by  whining  and  groaning,  not  by 
trying  to  escape  from  it  into  undisturbed  quiet,  but 
by  plunging  into  the  thick  of  life,  taking  as  well  as 
giving  blows.  This  course  of  action  introduces  a 
certain  joyousness  into  existence.  The  true  man  is 
he  who  can  laugh.  Laughter  and  dancing  and  sing¬ 
ing  are  to  mark  the  course  of  the  hero.  The  laughter 
of  Zarathustra  rang  out  in  the  most  serious  moments 
of  his  life. 

A  thought  was  developed  by  Nietzsche  in  his  later 
years  which  was  calculated  to  put  this  joyousness  to  a 
test.  It  was  that,  since  both  the  elements  and  the 
laws  of  the  world  are  unchangeable,  the  existence  of 
things  must  continue  in  an  endless  series  of  cycles. 


1 14 


ESSAYS 


Each  cycle  must  be  perfectly  similar  to  all  that  have 
been  before.  Such  as  we  are  now,  such  we  shall  be 
over  and  over  again.  There  is  no  cup  of  joy  that 
shall  not  in  endless  repetition  be  offered  to  us,  and 
no  cup  of  sorrow  that  shall  not,  over  and  over  again, 
be  pressed  to  our  lips.  That  is  the  true  joyousness 
which  welcomes  this  endless  repetition  of  all  the  ex¬ 
periences  of  life,  that,  as  life  is  ending,  “  can  cry  to 
the  Universe  Da  Capo .”  “For  I  love  thee,  O 
Eternity”  is  the  often  repeated  refrain  in  one  of  the 
chapters  of  Nietzsche’s  chief  work,  and  Eternity  is 
the  endless  revolution  of  the  same  great  series  of  ex¬ 
periences.  Professor  Lichtenberger,  who  in  general 
is  a  trustworthy  exponent  of  Nietzsche’s  thought,  at 
this  point  introduces  an  idea  which  I  am  confident  is 
foreign  to  the  teaching  of  the  master.  It  is  that  a 
man  may  look  forward  to  this  endless  return  in  the 
hope  that  another  time  he,  or  another  in  his  place, 
will  succeed  better  than  now,  and  win  the  stroke  which 
he  now  has  missed  ;  or  at  least  that  blind  chance 
may  some  time  reach  some  miraculous  and  dazzling 
success.1  The  hope  that  in  the  future  will  be  ground 
out,  or  reached  by  struggle,  anything  better  than  the 
past,  over  and  over  again,  has  seen,  contradicts  the 
very  foundation  on  which  the  theory  of  Nietzsche 
rests.  Should  this  hope  be  fulfilled,  a  new  element 
would  introduce  itself  into  the  process,  whereas  the 
theory  rests  upon  the  assumption  that  the  elements 
are  always  the  same,  and  that  the  same  elements 
must  always  produce  the  same  results.  It  is  like  the 
cycle  of  the  seed,  the  growing,  blossoming,  fruit¬ 
bearing  plant,  and  then  the  seed  again.  The  varia- 

1  So,  at  least,  I  understand  the  rather  vague  statements  on  pp. 
163,  164  of  La  Philosophic  de  Nietzsche. 


“  BEYOND  GOOD  AND  EVIL”  115 

tion  thus  introduced  would  by  necessity  multiply 
itself  in  the  eternities  indefinitely,  even  infinitely,' 
and  the  endlessly  self-repeating  cycle  would  be  no 
more.  It  is  the  eternal  recurrence  of  the  same  with 
which  the  modern  Zarathustrian  must  proclaim  him¬ 
self  content,  as  the  ancient  Zarathustrian  proclaimed 
himself,  in  advance,  content  with  the  awards  of  the 
final  judgment. 

From  all  that  has  been  said  it  will  be  seen  that 
the  system  of  Nietzsche  is  extremely  aristocratic. 
The  world  exists  for  its  great  and  strong  men.  He 
had  as  little  sympathy  with  philanthropists,  reformers, 
socialists,  and  anarchists  as  he  had  with  pessimists. 
The  woman  question  for  him  did  not  exist.  “  Man,” 
he  says,  “  should  be  educated  for  war  ;  woman  should 
be  educated  for  the  recreation  of  man.” 

We  have  thus  far  looked  for  the  most  part  at  the 
darker  side  of  the  philosophy  of  Nietzsche.  We 
have  not  considered  the  promise  of  hope  which  is 
bound  up  in  it.  The  one  central  thought  of  his  most 
mature  work,  the  “Thus  Spake  Zarathustra,”  is  that 
of  the  “  Beyond-Man.”  The  Beyond-Man  is  that  Be¬ 
ing  which  shall  be  developed  out  of  the  struggles  of 
humanity.  He  is  to  stand  in  the  same  relation  to 
man  in  which  man  stands  to  the  ape.  Man,  we  are 
told,  is  a  bridge  between  the  ape  and  the  Beyond- 
Man.  I  do  not  know  that  Nietzsche  gives  us  any 
light  upon  the  character  and  the  method  of  living 
of  the  Beyond-Man.  Indeed,  to  do  this  would  seem 
to  be  absolutely  impossible.  What  idea  could  the  ape 
form  of  the  Beyond- Ape,  that  is,  of  man  ?  Zarathus¬ 
tra  himself  makes  no  claim  to  be  the  Beyond-Man, 
though,  from  the  oracular  nature  of  his  utterances 
and  the  veneration  that  he  inspires  in  his  followers, 


ESSAYS 


116 

we  might  almost  suppose  that  he  was  himself  the 
first  example  of  the  coming  race.  He,  however, 
speaks  always  as  a  man.  The  burden  of  his  teaching 
is  to  prepare  the  way  for  the  Beyond-Man.  The 
largest  number  of  his  utterances  consists  of  stinging 
criticism  of  the  present,  its  littlenesses,  its  meannesses, 
its  petty  shifts.  Over  against  these  is  the  great  pro¬ 
mise  of  the  future.  Precisely  how  men  are  to  prepare 
the  way  for  the  Beyond-Man,  and  to  help  on  his  com¬ 
ing,  is  not  so  clear  as  it  might  be.  One  thing  at  least 
is  plain  :  it  is  the  duty  of  every  one  to  let  himself  out. 
Man  is  to  have  no  shams  and  no  submissions.  He  is 
to  recognize  no  right  and  no  wrong. 

In  regard  to  the  Beyond-Man,  we  know  at  least 
that  he  will  make  a  revaluation  of  all  things,  an 
Umwerthung  der  Werthe.  This  would  also  seem  the 
kind  of  work  to  which  all  are  summoned.  Here  I 
find  in  the  teaching  of  Nietzsche  a  weakening  that 
amounts  to  a  self-contradiction.  From  certain  state¬ 
ments  made  by  him  it  would  appear  that  not  every 
one  is  called  to  this  absolutely  free  manifestation  of 
all  that  is  in  him.  The  system  is,  as  we  have  seen, 
an  aristocratic  one,  and  it  recognizes  a  class  of  the 
select.  Zarathustra  says  :  — 

“  Do  you  call  yourself  free  ?  But  I  wish  to  know  what 
is  the  thought  that  rules  you,  and  not  what  yoke  you 
have  shaken  off. 

“  Are  you  of  the  number  of  those  who  have  the  right 
to  shake  off  a  yoke  ?  There  are  those  who,  when  they 
reject  the  servitude  in  which  they  have  lived,  reject  all 
that  has  given  them  any  worth.” 

After  quoting  this  passage,  Professor  Lichtenberger 
says  :  “  Nietzsche  proclaims  very  emphatically  that 
his  teaching  addresses  itself  to  only  a  small  number 


“  BEYOND  GOOD  AND  EVIL  ” 


n  7 


of  the  elect,  and  that  the  mediocre  crowd  should  live 
in  obedience  and  in  faith.”  In  this  way  Professor 
Lichtenberger  would  prove  that  the  teaching  of 
Nietzsche  should  not  be  criticised  as  a  dangerous 
doctrine.  It  is  addressed,  he  tells  us,  and  Nietzsche 
says  the  same,  only  to  the  few  who  will  understand 
it,  and  know  how  to  apply  it  properly.  I  confess 
that  I  cannot  see  where  the  line  is  to  be  drawn. 
The  abolition  of  the  distinction  between  good  and 
evil  is  publicly  proclaimed.  What  reason  has  one 
or  another  to  suppose  that  it  is  not  meant  for  him  ? 
The  test  of  greatness  is,  primarily,  to  make  a  “  re¬ 
valuation  of  values,”  and,  secondly,  it  is  the  power  to 
make  this  revaluation  accepted,  to  impress  it  upon 
the  world.  Now  the  power  to  accomplish  this  reval¬ 
uation  belongs  to  every  one,  but  no  one  can  tell  till 
he  has  tried  whether  or  not  he  can  make  his  new 
valuation  accepted.  In  fact,  such  revaluations  are 
continually  made.  A  young  man,  for  instance,  grows 
up  in  a  community  in  which  license  is  unknown. 
Under  the  influence  of  a  strong  passion  he  overturns 
the  old  system  of  values,  and  sets  up  a  new  one  in 
its  place.  What  are  traditions  and  sanctities  and 
laws  in  the  presence  of  a  passion  like  his  ?  It  seems 
to  him  that  his  experience  is  as  new  to  the  world  as 
it  is  to  himself.  He  makes  an  Umwerthung  der 
Werthe.  It  is  so  with  all  the  offenders  against  the 
order  and  peace  of  society.  The  thief,  the  murderer, 
the  embezzler,  all  have  set  a  fresh  valuation  upon  the 
various  possibilities  of  life.  They  have  overturned 
the  old  estimate  of  things,  and  have  established  a 
new.  According  to  Nietzsche,  they  would  seem  to 
be  absolutely  in  their  right,  and  no  talk  about  the 
select  few  can  do  away  with  this  natural  outcome  of 


1 18 


ESSAYS 


the  system.  It  is  true  that  these  reformers  of  the 
world  frequently  fail  in  accomplishing  their  revolu¬ 
tion.  They  fail  to  impress  their  new  ideas  and  ideals 
upon  society.  But  how  could  they  know  that  before 
they  tried  ?  Many  a  hero  must  fail  before  one  suc¬ 
ceeds  ;  but  if  there  were  not  freedom  of  competition 
how  could  the  one  be  successful  ?  Napoleon  is  the 
hero  of  modern  times,  but  he  only  did  on  a  large 
scale  what  many  are  doing,  or  trying  to  do,  on  a 
small  scale.  The  world  is  fertile  in  this  sort  of  vege¬ 
tation.  Many  upspringing  shoots  are  crushed  or 
crowded  out  of  existence  or  into  dwarfage,  while  now 
and  then  one  succeeds  in  raising  a  stately  trunk. 

To  another  instance  of  self-contradiction  we  owe 
that  which  forms  one  of  the  most  satisfactory  things 
in  the  writing  of  Nietzsche,  namely,  Zarathustra 
himself.  He  is  nobler  than  his  own  teaching,  far 
nobler  than  much  of  the  teaching  of  his  creator. 
Pity  was,  indeed,  as  we  are  told,  his  last  sin,  yet 
throughout  he  was  animated  by  sympathy  for  men, 
and  a  desire  to  serve  them.  In  fact,  it  was  to  the 
satisfaction  of  this  desire  that  he  devoted  his  life. 

When,  for  instance,  he  is  going  down  from  the 
mountain  to  preach  his  gospel  to  the  world,  he  thus 
apostrophizes  the  sun  as  it  is  rising  :  — 

“  Thou  great  star !  What  would  be  thy  happiness 
were  it  not  for  those  for  whom  thou  shinest  ?  .  .  . 

“  Lo  !  I  am  weary  of  my  wisdom,  like  the  bee  that 
hath  collected  too  much  honey ;  I  need  hands  reaching 
out  for  it. 

“  I  would  fain  grant  and  distribute  until  the  wise 
among  men  could  once  more  enjoy  their  folly,  and  the 
poor  once  more  their  riches. 

“  For  that  end  I  must  descend  to  the  depth,  as  thou 


“BEYOND  GOOD  AND  EVIL”  119 

dost  at  even,  when,  sinking  behind  the  sea,  thou  givest 
light  to  the  lower  regions,  Thou  resplendent  star ! 

“  I  must,  like  thee,  go  down,  as  men  say  —  men  to 
whom  I  would  descend. 

“  Then  bless  me,  thou  impassive  eye,  that  canst  look 
without  envy  even  upon  overmuch  happiness  ! 

“  Bless  the  cup  which  is  about  to  overflow  so  that  the 
water,  golden-flowing  out  of  it,  may  carry  everywhere  the 
reflection  of  thy  rapture. 

“  Lo  !  This  cup  is  about  to  empty  itself  again,  and 
Zarathustra  will  become  once  more  a  man.” 

Another  time  Zarathustra  exclaimed  : 

“  I  love  him  whose  soul  wasteth  itself,  who  neither 
wanteth  thanks  nor  returneth  aught ;  for  he  always  giveth 
and  seeketh  nothing  to  keep  for  himself.” 

This  gracious  figure  of  Zarathustra,  who  exclaimed 
once  “I  love  men,”  stands  as  a  protest  against  some 
of  the  teaching  which  Nietzsche  puts  into  his  mouth. 

The  teaching  of  Nietzsche  being  such  as  we  have 
seen  it  to  be,  we  may  naturally  ask  why  it  should 
have  been  received  with  so  much  favor.  One  can 
understand  why  it  should  arouse,  in  some,  such  in¬ 
dignation  as  that  with  which  Nordau  overwhelms  it. 
It  is  more  difficult  to  understand  how  it  should  draw 
to  itself  the  sympathetic  interest  of  thoughtful  and 
well-meaning  men. 

The  first  suggestion  that  may  occur  to  us  is  that 
this  teaching  is  startling  by  its  very  oddity.  A  man 
walking  through  the  street  on  his  hands  will  be  fol¬ 
lowed  by  a  crowd,  while  the  most  graceful  walker  on 
his  feet  will  pass  unnoticed.  This  suggestion,  though 
it  may  in  part  explain  the  attention  which  Nietzsche 
has  attracted  to  himself,  will  do  little  to  explain  the 


120 


ESSAYS 


thoughtful  and  even  sympathetic  reception  which  has 
been  to  such  an  extent  given  to  his  writings. 

Another  suggestion  which  is  more  pertinent  is 
that  it  is  the  talent,  not  to  say  the  genius,  of  Nietz¬ 
sche,  that  has  made  his  work  interesting.  No  mat¬ 
ter  what  genius  does,  there  will  be  found  those  who 
will  admire  it.  Nietzsche  was  unquestionably  a  man 
of  great  talent.  His  genius  was  perhaps  not  so  great 
as  some  of  his  admirers  picture  it.  It  certainly  was 
not  so  great  as  he  pictured  it  to  himself.  This  esti¬ 
mation  of  himself  appears  in  the  fact  that  he  appar¬ 
ently  considered  everything  that  came  into  his  head 
as  worthy  of  publication.  The  sweepings  of  his 
mental  workshop  evidently  seemed  to  him  as  precious 
as  those  of  a  gold-worker’s  room.  Thus  we  have,  for 
instance,  in  the  “  Beyond  Good  and  Evil,”  pages  of 
little  paragraphs  in  regard  to  matters  wholly  uncon¬ 
nected  with  the  subject  of  the  work,  which  would  be 
epigrams  if  they  were  only  epigrammatic.  Some 
sayings  are  put  into  the  mouth  of  Zarathustra  which 
would  be  commonplace  if  it  were  not  for  the  pom¬ 
pous  diction  in  which  they  are  expressed,  and  some 
that  are  commonplace  in  spite  of  this.  We  find  in 
these  works  repetition,  inflation,  and  indiscriminate¬ 
ness.  We  find  also  talent,  even  genius. 

When  we  look  into  the  matter  more  deeply,  how¬ 
ever,  we  are  tempted  to  ask  whether,  after  all,  the 
ethical  theories  of  Nietzsche  are  so  very  foreign  to 
the  hearts  and  lives  of  the  men  and  women  of  the 
present.  Have  the  teachings  of  the  New  Testament 
taken  such  complete  possession  of  the  world  that 
doctrines  like  those  that  we  have  been  considering 
naturally  excite  an  indignant  rejection?  Put  in  an¬ 
other  form,  the  question  is  whether  these  doctrines 


“BEYOND  GOOD  AND  EVIL” 


I  2 1 


are  not  found  startling  because  they  run  counter  to 
the  current  ethical  teaching  rather  than  because 
they  run  counter  to  the  principles  and  methods  of 
ordinary  life.  We  are  law-obeyers,  on  the  whole,  but 
is  there  not  some  truth  in  a  remark  of  Nietzsche  that 
the  law  has  worth,  not  because  it  preserves  peace 
among  men,  but  because  it  furnishes  conditions  under 
which  they  may  the  better  fight  one  another  ?  A 
sweeping  affirmative  answer  to  these  questions  would 
evidently  be  an  unworthy  exaggeration.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  seems  pretty  obvious  that  a  sweeping 
negative  answer  would  be  an  exaggeration  no  less. 

Perhaps  we  may  gain  a  little  help  in  this  matter 
from  a  glance  at  some  of  the  aspects  of  our  modem 
life.  Let  us  begin  with  the  war  with  Spain  that  has 
just  closed.  It  is  obvious  that  there  was  behind  the 
movement  which  finally  brought  about  the  war  a 
deep  sympathy  on  the  part  of  many  with  the  people 
of  Cuba  and  a  great  indignation  at  the  manner  in 
which,  as  it  was  believed,  they  had  been  misgoverned. 
This  feeling  was  altruistic.  It  showed  the  influence 
of  Christianity.  So  far  as  this  altruistic  feeling  was 
the  ruling  motive,  the  war  was  one  of  the  noblest 
ever  fought.  If  ever  there  was  a  Christian  war,  so 
far  as  this  motive  was  supreme,  this  was  a  Christian 
war,  more  really  Christian  than  the  Crusades. 

To  what  extent  and  in  what  proportion  this  feeling 
existed,  and  how  much  it  contributed  to  the  final  re¬ 
sult,  I  would  not  undertake  to  say  ;  perhaps  it  would 
be  impossible  to  say.  Other  feelings  and  other  mo¬ 
tives  were  working  together  with  this.  So  far  as 
these  other  motives  existed  and  so  far  as  they  sim¬ 
ply  made  use  of  the  altruistic  feeling,  so  far  the  war 
was  unchristian.  That  these  other  motives  existed 


I  22 


ESSAYS 


no  one,  probably,  will  doubt.  Persons  in  respecta¬ 
ble  society,  or  society  considered  respectable,  would 
hardly  commit  murder  to  advance  their  personal  in¬ 
terests  or  for  the  good  of  their  political  party.  But 
by  what  other  word  can  we  name  the  crime  of  those 
who  urged  on  the  war  in  order  to  enlarge  the  circula¬ 
tion  of  a  newspaper,  or  to  advance  any  other  form  of 
speculative  interest  ?  What  was  the  crime  of  those 
who  urged  it  on  in  order  to  win  popularity  for  them¬ 
selves  or  to  advance  the  interest  of  their  political 
party  ?  On  a  somewhat  higher  plane  stood  those 
who  fanned  the  flames  of  war  out  of  what  is  called 
“Jingoism,”  or  out  of  a  spirit  of  revenge  called  forth 
by  the  destruction  of  the  Maine.  In  these  motives, 
however,  we  find  no  trace  of  the  spirit  of  Christ. 
After  the  war  had  been  declared,  many  even  of  those 
who  opposed  it  felt  that  it  should  be  fought  out  as 
sternly  and  as  rapidly  as  possible.  Still  it  would  be 
interesting  to  know  the  special  motives  that  led  indi¬ 
viduals  to  take  part  in  it.  Some  unquestionably  did 
this  with  the  special  idea  of  helping  to  free  the  op¬ 
pressed  Cubans.  Of  what  proportion  this  was  true 
we  can  hardly  guess.  Whether  there  were  few  or 
many  who  were  influenced  by  this  motive,  we  see  in 
them  the  force  of  an  impulse  that  may  be  called 
Christian.  On  the  other  hand,  how  many  went  from 
quite  other  motives,  such  as  a  love  of  adventure,  or 
the  impulse  of  a  warlike  patriotism  ?  Christianity,  as 
I  understand  it,  does  not  frown  upon  love  of  adven¬ 
ture  or  patriotism  ;  but  perhaps  if  we  had  a  column 
of  Nietzschian  virtues  and  a  column  of  Christian  vir¬ 
tues,  these  would  seem  more  allied  with  the  former. 
They  are  at  least  akin  to  the  virtues  of  a  dominant 
race. 


“BEYOND  GOOD  AND  EVIL” 


123 


In  the  course  of  the  war,  and  in  the  events  that 
have  followed,  it  has  been  made  evident  that  the 
popular  hero  is  to-day  just  as  truly  the  military  hero 
as  at  any  other  period  in  the  history  of  the  world. 
In  extolling  the  grand  fighting  qualities  of  our  army 
and  navy  we  have  had  little  thought  of  the  cause  for 
which  they  were  fighting.  Now  that  the  war  is  over 
we  see  the  nation  virtuously  protesting,  in  regard  to 
Cuba  and  its  debt,  that  the  war  was  not  one  of  con¬ 
quest  ;  yet  it  is  apparently  ready  to  hold  fast  what¬ 
ever  else  may  be  in  its  possession  by  the  right  of  the 
strongest,  even  that  which  was  won  by  error  in  a  time 
of  peace,  and  even  that  which  has  not  been  won  at 
all.  What  our  nation  is  thus  doing  is  a  type  of  what 
other  nations  are  doing.  There  is  one  other  aspect 
of  the  war  that  should  be  noticed.  I  refer  to  the 
fraternal  relations  at  once  established  between  the 
soldiers  of  the  opposing  armies  when  peace  came. 
Our  soldiers  would  seem  to  have  taken  the  initiative 
in  this  movement.  We  are  tempted  to  see  in  this 
the  product  of  Christian  civilization. 

If  we  turn  from  this  special  illustration  taken  from 
the  war  to  the  picture  of  life  as  it  offers  itself  under 
ordinary  conditions,  we  find  a  like  contrast.  We  find 
a  far-reaching  philanthropy.  We  find  gracious  and 
useful  lives,  lived  under  modern  conditions  it  is  true, 
but  with  much  of  the  spirit  of  the  Master.  On  the 
other  hand  we  have  much  that  is  hard  and  selfish. 
We  have  a  competition  that  often  shows  no  mercy. 
We  have  a  self-seeking  that  is  certainly  very  far  from 
anything  that  could  be  called  Christian.  If  we  look 
at  our  politics  —  but  I  would  rather  not  look  at  them. 

In  what  proportion  all  these  various  elements  are 
mingled  in  our  modern  world  I  do  not  undertake  to 


124 


ESSAYS 


say.  I  wish  merely  to  recognize  the  fact  that  there 
is  much  in  it  that  would  find  in  the  teachings  of 
Nietzsche  the  expression  of  its  own  life.  We  may 
imagine  the  relief  which  many,  and  they  not  of  the 
lowest,  may  feel  at  having  the  altruistic  talk  to  which 
they  have  been  so  long  used  interrupted  for  a  mo¬ 
ment  to  give  place  to  utterances  of  what  seems  to 
them  good,  solid,  common  sense.  We  may  imagine 
them  to  feel  a  satisfaction  like  that  of  the  spoilsman 
in  our  national  politics  when  some  one  bolder  or 
more  outspoken  than  the  rest  pronounces  civil-service 
reform  to  be  a  humbug,  and  holds  up  again  for  respect 
the  time-honored  rights  of  the  victor. 

Leaving  more  superficial  matters  out  of  the  ac¬ 
count,  it  would  seem,  then,  that  the  qualities  of  the 
teaching  of  Nietzsche  most  likely  to  excite  interest 
are  its  apparent  frankness  and  honesty  and  its  robust 
strength.  In  comparison  with  it,  it  is  easy  to  under¬ 
stand  that,  to  some  at  least,  the  precepts  of  Chris¬ 
tianity,  as  uttered  in  these  days,  should  seem  like 
cant,  or  that,  if  they  are  taken  seriously,  they  should 
seem  fitted  to  produce  weak  and  ineffective  lives. 

In  conclusion,  I  would  like  to  compare  a  little 
more  carefully  the  ideal  of  Nietzsche  with  that  of 
Christianity.  However  different  they  may  be,  there 
is  a  sense  in  which  they  may  be  said  to  spring  from 
the  same  root.  As  I  expressed  myself  in  agreement 
with  the  doctrine  of  Nietzsche  in  regard  to  the  in¬ 
stinctive  basis  of  belief,  so  here  I  find  myself  in  per¬ 
fect  agreement  with  his  doctrine  that  the  desire  of 
power  is  the  fundamental  element  of  life.  Life  is 
self-assertion,  and  this  self-assertion  is,  as  Nietzsche 
insists,  not  merely  negative  but  positive.  One  who, 
simply  for  the  sake  of  practicing  the  negative  virtue 


“BEYOND  GOOD  AND  EVIL” 


125 


of  forbearance,  should,  when  one  cheek  is  smitten, 
turn  the  other  also,  or  who,  simply  in  order  to  avoid 
an  act  of  refusal,  should,  when  some  one  asks  his 
coat,  give  his  cloak  also  —  such  a  person  would  be 
on  the  way  to  self-effacement,  and  the  completion  of 
the  process  would  involve  little  loss  to  the  world. 

Students  of  the  New  Testament  have  taken  various 
methods  to  explain,  or  to  explain  away,  the  precepts, 
such  as  I  have  referred  to,  that  are  found  in  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount.  Some  would  find  in  them 
merely  a  popular  exaggeration.  Doubtless  there  is 
in  them  a  certain  amount  of  popular  exaggeration  ; 
but  in  making  allowance  for  this  we  must  beware  of 
minimizing  them  into  commonplaces.  Some  would 
say  that  they  are  rules  designed  for  the  time  when 
the  whole  world  shall  be  Christianized.  It  seems 
unfortunate,  however,  to  have  rules  that  cannot  be 
used  till  they  are  needless.  Some  would  have  them 
designed  especially  for  the  Disciples,  who  had  on 
hand  so  much  pressing  business  of  the  highest  mo¬ 
ment  that  they  had  no  time  to  waste  in  quarreling. 
This  explanation  seems  hardly  complimentary  to 
those  of  us  who  come  after.  It  would  imply  that 
our  duties  and  responsibilities  are  less  pressing. 

Perhaps  it  is  impossible  to  explain  with  perfect 
clearness  the  sweep  and  the  significance  of  these  in¬ 
junctions.  One  thing  is,  however,  perfectly  clear,  that 
if  we  are  to  approach  in  any  degree  the  comprehen¬ 
sion  of  what  Jesus  meant  by  them,  we  must  call  to  our 
aid  whatever  the  Gospels  tell  us  of  the  habits  of  life 
and  mind  of  him  that  spoke  them.  We  gain  nothing 
when  we  take  them  by  themselves,  and  try  to  guess 
how  much  or  how  little  scope  they  had  in  the 
thought  of  the  great  teacher.  According  to  the  Gos- 


126 


ESSAYS 


pel  story,  the  same  lips  that  uttered  these  precepts 
of  submission  to  whatever  might  occur  uttered  also 
the  terrible  and  stinging  words  which  were  addressed 
to  the  Pharisees.  Some  persons  are  greatly  troubled 
by  these  because  they  seem  so  foreign  to  what  they 
consider  the  Christian  spirit.  Others  have  been 
troubled,  as  we  have  seen,  by  the  sweeping  character 
of  the  precepts  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount.  If  we 
are  to  understand  the  character  of  Jesus,  and  if  we 
seek  to  obtain  the  inspiration  that  comes  from  con¬ 
tact  with  his  real  personality,  we  must  unite,  as  well 
as  we  can,  these  two  forms  of  speech  that  may  seem 
at  first  sight  so  divergent.  We  must  feel  something 
of  the  power  of  the  personality  that  could  utter  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount  and  upbraid  with  such  inten¬ 
sity  of  passion  the  oppressors  of  the  poor.  Whatever 
difficulty  we  may  find  in  formal  exposition,  we  must 
be  content  with  no  explanation  of  one  of  these  utter¬ 
ances  that  seems  to  leave  no  place  for  the  other. 
The  fundamental  element  of  life  is,  as  Nietzsche 
insisted,  an  active,  invasive  self-assertion.  The  life 
that  lacks  this  is  simply  an  imperfect  life.  So  far  as 
it  lacks  this,  it  is  not  life.  The  difference  between 
lives  depends  upon  the  kind  of  self  that  is  asserted. 
If  a  man  has  nothing  to  assert  but  his  simple  indi¬ 
vidual  personality  with  its  demands  for  satisfaction 
and  honor,  let  him  maintain  that.  If  such  a  man 
does  not  resent  an  insult  or  an  injury  he  is  a  craven. 
Let  him  resist  evil  which  is  done  or  threatened 
against  himself.  He  has  nothing  better  to  do  in  the 
world,  and  to  fail  in  this  would  be  dishonor.  A  man, 
however,  may  have  a  self  so  large  that  these  matters 
of  personal  annoyance  seem  insignificant.  His  self 
may  include  his  family,  his  country,  humanity.  Such 


“BEYOND  GOOD  AND  EVIL” 


127 


a  man  would  spend  little  time  and  strength  on  the 
trifling  matters  that  have  been  referred  to.  Why 
does  a  gentleman  ordinarily  not  stop  to  bandy  words 
or  to  fight  with  boys  that  may  insult  him  on  the 
street  ?  It  is  because  he  sees  that  it  is  not  worth 
his  while.  Why  does  not  the  true  mother  fall  into 
a  passion  with  the  waywardness  of  the  child  ?  It  is 
because  she  loves  it.  In  neither  of  these  cases  does 
self-restraint  spring  from  weakness  or  self-effacement. 
It  comes  rather  from  strength  and  self-assertion. 
The  negative  virtues,  so  called,  are  worthless  and 
worse  than  worthless,  if  they  do  not  result  from  the 
fullness  of  a  large  and  strong  life.  Even  “  Zarathus- 
tra,  the  godless,”  said  : 

“  Often  there  is  more  bravery  in  one’s  keeping  quiet 
and  going  past,  in  order  to  spare  one’s  self  for  a  worthy 
enemy. 

“  In  particular,  ye  have  to  pass  by  much  rabble  that 
maketh  a  din  of  people  and  peoples  in  your  ears.” 

If  we  reach  the  thought  of  Jesus  as  a  complete 
and  living  personality,  and  feel  the  power  of  his  life 
and  his  teaching  as  a  single  whole,  we  shall  find  that 
the  precepts  that  seem  most  negative  and  repressive 
take  for  granted  a  fullness  of  positive  life.  The 
great  principle  of  service  of  which  he  speaks  becomes 
transformed  when  we  recognize  it  as  the  service  of 
love,  for  love  is  the  purest  self-assertion.  What  a 
man  does  out  of  love,  he  does  because  it  is  his  pas¬ 
sion  to  do  it.  If  love  seems  sometimes  weak,  we 
realize  its  strength  when  we  see  it  beating  against 
oppression  that  would  contradict  its  fundamental 
nature.  When  Jesus  said,  He  that  loseth  his  life 
shall  save  it,  he  said  in  effect,  The  self-surrender 
to  which  I  call  you  is  the  truest  self-assertion. 


128 


ESSAYS 


We  find  thus  in  the  teachings  of  Christianity  a 
summons  to  a  strength  far  greater  than  that  implied 
by  the  self-assertion  which  is  most  characteristic  of 
the  teachings  of  Nietzsche,  because  it  is  the  assertion 
of  a  larger  self.  It  was  Jesus  who  fulfilled  the  ideal 
to  which  Nietzsche  points,  for  it  was  he  who  accom¬ 
plished  the  greatest  transformation  of  values  that  the 
world  has  seen.  What  had  been  of  no  account  he 
lifted  to  the  highest  plane.  The  enthusiastic  words 
of  Paul  are  not  too  strong  to  describe  the  “  revalua¬ 
tion  of  values  ”  which  was  involved  in  Christianity  : 
“The  base  things  of  the  world,  and  the  things  that 
are  despised,”  these,  he  tells  us,  did  God  choose. 
Jesus  had  also  power  to  impress  his  revaluation  upon 
the  world.  The  cross,  the  emblem  of  disgrace  and 
suffering,  became  the  symbol  of  victory.  Service 
rather  than  mastery  became  the  ideal  of  the  world  ; 
and  we  have  had  a  race  of  Christian  heroes  than 
whom  the  world  has  seen  none  nobler.  I  say  became 
the  ideal .  We  have  just  seen  how  limited  is  the 
power  that  specifically  Christian  teaching  has  to-day. 
Yet  through  the  ages  of  Christian  history  it  has  fur¬ 
nished  the  ideal  which  has,  on  the  whole,  guided 
the  development  of  man  in  Christian  lands.  This 
ideal  has  been  honored  even  where  it  has  not  been 
obeyed.  It  has  opened  a  larger  life  to  the  hearts  of 
men,  even  where  their  acts  fell  far  short  of  what  this 
ideal  would  require.  Even  the  little  that  was  done 
received  a  new  significance  from  the  largeness  of  the 
thought  of  which  it  was  so  poor  an  expression. 

While  Nietzsche  made  a  readjustment  of  values,  it 
cannot  be  claimed  for  him  that  he  has  made  a  new 
valuation.  What  is  most  characteristic  in  him  is  the 
attempt  to  reinstate  old  valuations.  The  point  of 


“BEYOND  GOOD  AND  EVIL” 


129 


view  which  he  inculcates  is,  practically  speaking, 
identical  with  that  of  a  robber-baron  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  The  new  valuation  had  been  already  made. 
Zarathustra  in  his  loftiest  moments  recognizes  it. 
It  was  in  Christianity  that  this  transformation  of  the 
world’s  estimates,  this  Umwerthung  der  Werthe  was 
accomplished.  The  world  of  which  Nietzsche  speaks 
as  being  beyond  good  and  evil  is  rather  below  this 
distinction  than  above  it.  It  is  the  world  of  the 
savage,  in  whom  the  moral  ideal  has  not  yet  been 
created.  The  world  to  which  Christianity  points  is 
the  only  realm  which  is  above  and  beyond  good  and 
evil.  There  the  moral  law  has  no  place,  for  in  love 
the  law  is  fulfilled. 


VI 


NATURALISM  AND  ITS  RESULTS 

It  is  a  familiar  fact  that  every  person  stands  in 
the  centre  of  his  own  world.  The  zenith  is  directly 
over  his  head.  The  horizon  circles  about  him  as  its 
centre.  The  rainbow  paints  itself  for  his  eye.  If  he 
stand  upon  the  shore  of  the  ocean  the  declining  sun 
stretches  its  golden  pathway  to  his  feet.  Something 
like  this  is  true  in  regard  to  time.  Each  moment  is 
an  epoch  in  which  past  and  future  meet.  Old  tend¬ 
encies,  old  movements,  put  on  new  forms  and  work 
towards  fresh  results.  Thus  it  is  probable  that  to 
every  developing  people  each  generation  has  seemed 
to  fill  a  special  place  in  the  unfolding  history  of  the 
world.  Each  age  has  seemed  to  be  in  some  special 
sense  an  epoch.  Besides  these  apparent  epochs,  the 
special  importance  of  which  may  be  due  to  the  same 
sort  of  illusion  which  makes  each  individual  the  ap¬ 
parent  centre  of  his  world,  there  are  epochs  which 
are  recognized  as  such,  even  after  the  times  which 
they  represent  have  receded  into  the  past.  There 
are  dates  which  stand  out  from  other  dates,  marking 
real  turning-points  in  history.  There  are  dates  from 
which  time  is  reckoned,  like  that  of  the  birth  of  Jesus 
or  the  flight  of  Mohammed.  There  are  others  which, 
although  they  do  not  serve  as  dividing  lines  in  the 
world’s  reckoning,  are  yet  recognized  as  marked 
points  of  accomplishment  and  beginning.  Such,  for 


NATURALISM  AND  ITS  RESULTS  131 

instance,  is  the  time  of  the  Renaissance ,  or  of  the 
so-called  Enlightenment. 

It  may  be  owing  to  the  illusion  of  which  I  first  spoke 
—  that  which  makes  every  age  seem  a  special  one  to 
those  who  live  in  it  —  but  I  cannot  help  thinking 
that  the  generation  just  passed  will  take  its  place 
among  those  periods  which  are  epochal,  not  merely 
to  the  persons  living  in  them  but  to  the  general  his¬ 
torian.  It  may  help  us  to  understand  its  position 
if  we  recall  a  remark  made  somewhere  by  Herbert 
Spencer,  a  remark  that  was  of  the  nature  of  a  pro¬ 
phecy.  He  said,  in  effect,  that  inventions  and  dis¬ 
coveries  would  increase  in  a  constantly  accelerated 
ratio,  for  the  reason  that  each  one  as  it  was  made 
would  suggest  others,  so  that  out  of  each  would 
spring  a  group,  and  out  of  each  member  of  this  group 
would  spring  another  group.  In  this  way  we  may 
understand  how  it  is  that  tendencies  which  have  long 
been  quietly  working  towards  their  goal  should  sud¬ 
denly  manifest  themselves  by  the  production  of 
marked  disturbances  and  rearrangements. 

The  most  important  tendency  in  modern  thought 
would  seem  to  have  reached  its  climax  in  the  years 
just  passed,  and  to  have  opened  the  way  for  the  be¬ 
ginning  of  a  movement  that  is  to  a  large  degree 
a  fresh  start  in  the  intellectual  and  spiritual  life  of 
the  world.  The  line  of  development  which  has  thus 
reached  its  climax  is  that  which  is  known  as  Natural¬ 
ism.  We  may  trace  it  back  to  the  humanism  of  the 
Renaissance.  First  we  had  the  recognition  of  man 
and  of  human  interests.  The  natural  human  life 
with  its  beauty  and  its  charm  took  the  place  of  the 
supernatural  relations  to  which  thought  and  art  had 
so  long  devoted  themselves.  Then  we  had  interest 


132 


ESSAYS 


in  nature,  meaning  by  this  the  physical  world,  assert¬ 
ing  itself  to  such  an  extent  as  to  leave  little  space 
for  the  mental  and  spiritual  faculties  of  man.  The 
ideal  of  the  naturalistic  philosophy  is  to  make  of 
the  history  of  this  developing  world  a  series  of  equa¬ 
tions.  The  lowest  and  the  earliest  condition  and 
content  of  the  world  must  be  equivalent  to  the  later 
and  the  higher.  In  order  that  these  equations  may 
exist  it  is  necessary  to  reduce  everything  to  a  me¬ 
chanical  process.  To  the  smooth  working  of  this 
machine  the  human  mind  and  the  human  will  do  not 
naturally  adapt  themselves.  Freedom  of  the  will 
was  long  ago  cast  aside.  It  was  reserved  for  these 
later  times  to  deny  that  any  state  or  activity  of  the 
conscious  life  of  the  human  spirit  can  have  any  effect 
whatever,  either  upon  the  world  without  or  upon  any 
subsequent  condition  or  act  of  the  mind  itself.  I  am 
not  going  to  discuss  this  matter  of  so-called  automa¬ 
tism.  I  wish  merely  to  recognize  the  result  to  which 
the  naturalistic  philosophy  has  arrived  in  its  attempt 
to  explain  the  world.  It  simply  casts  aside  trouble¬ 
some  factors,  although  these  may  be  among  the  most 
obvious  and  fundamental  facts  of  experience.  I  am 
reminded  of  a  young  doctor  of  whom  it  is  related  that 
when  he  was  called  to  set  a  broken  limb,  he  found  it 
impossible  to  reduce  it.  A  part  of  the  bone  stood 
out  and  he  could  not  force  it  into  its  place,  so  he 
simply  sawed  off  the  projecting  portion  of  the  bone. 
In  this  way  he  made  a  wonderfully  neat  job,  but  the 
operation  was  not  considered  a  success.  I  confess 
that  I  am  continually  reminded  of  this  young  doctor 
by  the  naturalistic  attempts  to  present  a  systematic 
view  of  the  world.  The  one  object  appears  to  be  to 
make  a  neat  job.  Whatever  does  not  yield  itself  to 


NATURALISM  AND  ITS  RESULTS 


133 


the  process  is  ruthlessly  sawed  away.  What  are  the 
human  mind,  and  the  human  will,  and  the  unity  of 
the  spiritual  life,  that  they  should  stand  in  the  way  of 
a  smooth  and  well-rounded  system  of  the  universe  ? 
Notwithstanding  these  heroic  measures  the  neat  job 
is  not  even  momentarily  accomplished.  By  the  side 
of  automatism  we  have  agnosticism.  Agnosticism 
is  simply  a  confession  of  failure.  The  naturalistic 
philosophy  has  had  everything  its  own  way.  It  has 
had  at  its  service  the  discoveries  of  modern  science, 
so  vast  and  so  marvelous  that  we  cannot  wonder  if 
its  head  has  been  somewhat  turned  thereby.  It  has 
excluded  from  its  calculations  the  factors  that  gave 
it  trouble.  Yet  at  the  end  it  confesses  that  it  finds 
the  riddle  insoluble.  It  throws  up  the  problem  in 
despair.  Its  method  made  its  failure  a  predestined 
fact.  In  this  case,  as  in  all  cases,  the  solution  of  a 
problem  is  to  be  sought  at  the  point  of  greatest  diffi¬ 
culty.  The  elements  that  were  cast  away  as  negli¬ 
gible,  because  they  seemed  unmanageable,  were  the 
very  ones  in  which  the  possibility  of  even  proximate 
success  was  bound  up. 

I  have  said  that  in  these  later  years  we  seem  to 
have  reached  one  of  those  greater  nodes  which  mark 
real  divisions  in  the  course  of  human  thought,  and 
which  will  be  recognized  as  such  by  the  historian. 
Has  not  naturalism  in  its  attempt  to  form  a  system 
of  the  universe  reached  a  point  beyond  which  it  can 
go  no  further  ?  It  started  in  the  earnest  quest  for 
truth.  At  the  end  it  is  greeted  by  the  blankness  of 
Agnosticism.  In  its  beginning  it  would  deal  with 
facts  alone.  It  ends  by  ignoring  the  most  important 
facts  of  our  experience.  In  its  effort  to  avoid  the 
supernatural  it  has  given  us  in  its  place  the  unnatural ; 


134 


ESSAYS 


for  is  not  the  mechanical  world,  and  the  mechanical 
life  that  it  offers  us,  as  unlike  the  living  universe  and 
the  living  man  as  a  manikin  forced  into  spasmodic 
movement  by  springs  and  wheels  is  unlike  the  living, 
feeling,  willing,  and  aspiring  man  ? 1 

While  naturalism,  so  far  as  its  claim  to  furnish  a 
system  of  the  universe  is  concerned,  has  ended  in  the 
reductio  ad  absurdum  at  which  we  have  just  glanced, 
it  must  be  remembered  that  this  claim  is  the  point  of 
least  interest  in  its  history.  Though  when  standing 
alone  it  can  accomplish  so  little,  it  has,  in  its  develop¬ 
ment,  exerted  a  mighty  influence  upon  all  forms  of 
life  and  thought.  This  influence  has  been  sometimes 
for  good,  sometimes  for  evil.  It  has  been  a  power 
working  for  the  physical  well-being  of  man,  and  has 
made  wonderful  transformations  for  which  we  cannot 
be  too  grateful.  It  has  accomplished  these  partly 
by  discoveries  and  inventions  which  have  freed  men 
in  some  respects  from  the  tyranny  of  the  environ¬ 
ment,  and  partly  by  promoting  political  liberty.  In 
its  advance  old  superstitions  in  regard  to  church 
and  state  which  had  united  to  keep  men  in  subjec¬ 
tion  have  disappeared,  and  men  were  left  to  work  out 
their  own  welfare  to  a  degree  that  had  been  long 
unknown.  At  the  same  time  the  tendency  to  a 
theoretical  materialism,  or  to  a  view  of  the  world 
practically  indistinguishable  from  this,  has  been 

1  A  passage  in  one  of  the  letters  of  Spinoza  (variously  numbered 
as  the  1 2th  and  the  29th)  is  so  pertinent  to  the  present  situation  that 
I  cannot  resist  the  temptation  to  quote  a  part  of  it.  After  speak¬ 
ing  of  measure,  time,  and  number,  which  may  well  represent  the  ele¬ 
ments  that  naturalism  has  at  its  command,  he  goes  on  to  say :  Quare 
non  mirum  est  quod  omnes,  qui  similibus  notionibus  et  quidem 
praeterea  male  intellectis  progressum  naturae  intelligere  conati  sunt, 
adeo  mirifice  se  intricarent,  ut  tandem  se  extricare  nequiverint,  nisi 
omnia  perrumpendo  et  absurda  etiam  absurdissima  admittendo. 


NATURALISM  AND  ITS  RESULTS 


135 


accompanied  by  a  tendency  to  an  actual  materialism 
in  which  the  ideal  elements  of  life,  in  the  higher  sense 
of  these  words,  became  obscured.  Humanism,  indeed, 
has  retained  enough  of  its  original  marks  to  promote 
great  schemes  of  philanthropy  and  much  individual 
devotion  to  the  welfare  of  the  world,  but  it  is  a  mere 
commonplace  to  speak  of  the  absorption  of  many  in 
the  merely  material  objects  of  life.  By  a  curious 
inversion  the  tendencies  that  at  first  led  to  the  eman¬ 
cipation  of  man  from  oppression  have  in  these  latter 
days  resulted  in  a  new  form  of  tyranny,  that  of  party 
and  party  leaders.  As  America  is  more  purely 
modern  than  Europe,  that  is,  as  here  modernity  is 
less  influenced  by  old  tradition  and  the  remnants  of 
the  past,  so  it  is  here  that  this  misrule  that  grows 
out  of  the  intensity  of  the  struggle  for  material  ad¬ 
vancement  has  had  its  most  perfect  development. 
The  tendency  that  led  to  making  freedom  and  com¬ 
fort  the  first  and  greatest  object  of  life  ends  in  a 
degradation  of  municipal  government  which  is  to  a 
large  extent  peculiar  to  our  country  among  civilized 
peoples. 

We  have  to  notice  further  that  the  naturalism 
which  at  first  worked  to  the  revival  of  art  and  the 
development  of  enjoyment  of  the  beauty  of  the  world 
and  life  tends,  when  it  becomes  supreme,  to  crush 
out  aesthetic  taste.  The  modern  world  is,  because  of 
this,  largely  a  prosaic  world.  It  is  a  foe  to  the  best 
art.  At  the  touch  of  our  western  civilization  Japan¬ 
ese  and  Indian  art  shrivels  like  a  delicate  flower  at 
the  first  breath  of  the  winter  wind.  So  far  as  our 
own  artistic  production  is  concerned,  poetry  has  the 
best  resisted  this  chilling  influence.  Indeed,  poetry 
would  seem  to  have  been  stimulated  to  nobler  pro- 


ESSAYS 


136 

ductions,  partly  doubtless  in  protest  against  the  pro¬ 
saic  influences  that  were  benumbing  other  forms  of 
artistic  creation. 

It  is,  however,  the  effect  of  naturalism  upon  the 
religious  thought  and  life  that  we  have  here  chiefly 
to  consider.  In  this,  also,  we  find  mingled  good  and 
evil.  So  far  as  the  thought  of  the  religious  commu¬ 
nity  itself  is  concerned,  the  effect  has  been  for  good. 
So  far  as  the  general  interest  in  religion  is  concerned, 
its  effect  has  been  for  evil.  In  other  words,  while 
the  church  has  offered  to  the  world  a  purer  religion 
than  in  the  past,  the  world  has  shown  itself  less  ready 
to  receive  the  gift. 

Naturalism  is,  as  the  name  implies,  the  foe  of  super¬ 
naturalism.  The  Christian  Church  had  accepted  a 
form  of  supernaturalism  so  extravagant,  so  fantastic 
in  certain  of  its  aspects,  and  so  terrible  in  others, 
that  the  attacks  of  the  developing  naturalistic  spirit 
found  a  field  for  the  exercise  of  a  healthful  reform. 
It  is  when,  exulting  in  its  success,  this  naturalism 
would  stand  absolutely  alone,  leaving  no  vestige  of 
the  power  against  which  it  had  striven  so  long,  that 
the  ill  effects  begin  to  show  themselves.  What  the 
world  needs,  here  as  everywhere,  is  a  balance  of 
forces.  The  true  relation  is  established  when  nat¬ 
uralism  and  supernaturalism  work  harmoniously  to¬ 
gether,  each  furnishing  at  once  a  check  and  an 
inspiration  to  the  other.  This  harmonious  co-working 
may  seem  at  first  sight  made  impossible  by  the  very 
nature  of  the  two.  Naturalism  is,  in  its  very  es¬ 
sence,  the  exclusion  of  supernaturalism.  How,  then, 
can  the  two  coexist  and  cooperate  ?  The  solution  of 
the  apparent  contradiction  is  easy.  Naturalism  may 
be  left  to  have  its  way  so  far  as  the  succession  of 


NATURALISM  AND  ITS  RESULTS  137 

concrete  facts  is  concerned,  yet  the  very  order  thus 
established  may  point  to  a  supernatural  element  by 
which  it  is  penetrated  or  in  which  it  rests. 

As  was  the  case  with  naturalism  in  its  attempt  at 
the  formation  of  a  system  of  the  universe,  so  here, 
in  its  effect  upon  religious  thought,  it  is  in  the  last 
generation  that  a  certain  climax  has  been  reached. 
Tendencies  that  have  been  working  for  ages  seem 
to  have  leaped  suddenly  to  their  fulfillment.  As 
sometimes  upon  a  mountain-side,  where  heat  and 
cold,  running  water  and  expanding  ice,  have  been 
for  long  years  quietly  at  work,  loosening  the  bonds 
that  held  great  masses  of  rock  and  earth  together, 
the  result  of  this  quiet  working  shows  itself  in  a 
mighty  avalanche  by  which  the  whole  aspect  of  the 
region  is  changed  ;  so  in  these  later  years  intellectual 
and  spiritual  forces  have  suddenly  accomplished  re¬ 
sults  for  which  they  have  been  quietly  preparing 
during  centuries. 

I  cannot  help  feeling  that  the  changes  that  have 
taken  place  in  religious  thought  within  the  Christian 
Church  during  these  later  years,  and  in  the  attitude 
of  the  church  towards  the  world,  are  the  most  mo¬ 
mentous  in  its  entire  history.  These  have  been 
brought  about  by  the  naturalism  which  has  worked 
out  such  vast  results  in  other  fields  of  thought  and 
life.  The  facts  are  so  familiar  as  to  be  commonplace. 
I  think,  however,  that  many  fail  to  realize  the  mar¬ 
velous  suddenness  of  the  changes  that  have  taken 
place.  In  calling  attention  to  this  I  wish  also  to  em¬ 
phasize  the  relation  of  these  changes  to  that  natural¬ 
ism  which  has  been  for  so  many  ages  working  towards 
the  reconstruction  of  the  world  of  thought  and  life. 
The  most  important  of  these  changes  in  Christianity 


138 


ESSAYS 


are  in  regard  to  the  idea  of  authority  in  religious 
belief,  in  regard  to  the  thought  of  the  relation  of  God 
to  the  world,  and  in  regard  to  the  relation  of  religion 
to  life.  We  can  do  little  more  than  glance  at  these 
three  great  topics  ;  but  perhaps  even  this  rapid  sur¬ 
vey  of  the  field  may  not  be  wholly  without  interest. 

When  we  here  speak  of  the  changed  attitude  of 
the  church,  direct  reference  can,  of  course,  be  made 
only  to  that  portion  of  the  church,  whatever  special 
titles  it  may  bear,  which  represents  what  is  com¬ 
monly  called  the  Progressive  Movement,  or,  in  other 
words,  the  New  Theology.  How  widely  the  church 
in  general  may  be  affected  by  this  movement  it 
would  be  hard  to  say ;  but  there  is  scarcely  any 
body  of  Christians  that  does  not  feel  in  some 
respects  its  influence,  in  which  there  is  not  a  move¬ 
ment  in  advance.  What  I  have  to  say  will  then  not 
characterize  the  church  as  a  whole,  but  will  describe 
views  which  have  found  lodgment  in  the  church. 

In  no  respect  has  the  change  in  religious  thought 
been  more  marked  than  in  regard  to  the  authority  of 
the  Bible.  When  we  seek  the  causes  of  this  change 
we  must  recognize  the  general  tendency  of  the  age, 
which  is,  as  we  have  seen,  towards  naturalism  and 
away  from  supernaturalism.  This  tendency,  which 
in  so  many  ways  has  very  suddenly  come  to  a  con¬ 
sciousness  of  itself,  has  been  working  through  differ¬ 
ent  channels  as  a  quiet  force,  not  to  be  detected  by 
any  special  analysis.  The  effect  of  naturalism  upon 
men’s  thought  of  the  Bible  is  too  obvious  to  be  dwelt 
upon.  As  the  monarch  is  seen  to  be  a  man  like  other 
men,  as  the  priest  is  seen  to  be  a  man  like  other  men, 
so  the  natural  tendency  is  to  see  in  the  Bible  a  book 
like  other  books.  It  seems  but  a  little  while  ago 


NATURALISM  AND  ITS  RESULTS 


139 


that  Theodore  Parker  preached  his  sermon  on  “  The 
Transient  and  Permanent  in  Christianity.”  When 
we  recall  the  reception  that  this  sermon  met  even  in 
the  freest  of  Christian  sects,  how  this  sect,  based 
upon  liberalism,  stiffened  into  illiberalism,  and  then 
see  to  what  an  extent  his  thought  has  permeated 
the  most  conservative  Christian  bodies,  we  can  only 
marvel  at  the  greatness  and  the  suddenness  of  the 
change.  In  former  generations  men  have  questioned 
the  authority  of  the  Bible  ;  but  they  either  stood  out¬ 
side  the  church  or  occupied  a  doubtful  position  within 
it.  Now  those  who  hold  this  position  are  sufficient 
in  number  to  form  a  distinct  wing  in  most  Christian 
bodies.  Let  us  look  more  closely  at  the  change  of 
which  I  speak  and  see  what  is  the  form  under  which 
it  manifests  itself. 

I  suppose  that  among  those  who  represent  the 
New  Theology,  so  called,  there  are  few  who  would 
maintain  that  this  represents  the  view  of  Paul  or  any 
other  New  Testament  writer.  Certainly  no  Unitarian 
would  make  this  claim  for  his  own  thought,  and  I 
doubt  if  any  liberal  theologian  of  any  name  would 
claim  it  for  his.  The  Christology  and  the  doctrine 
of  the  Atonement,  as  held  by  the  older  church,  repre¬ 
sented  just  as  little  the  thought  of  any  New  Testa¬ 
ment  writer,  but  those  who  held  these  views  believed 
that  they  thus  conformed,  which  is  all  that  our 
present  purpose  requires.  They  took,  it  must  be  ad¬ 
mitted,  great  liberties  in  their  interpretation.  They 
looked  at  many  of  the  most  important  New  Testa¬ 
ment  passages  very  superficially ;  but  even  while 
they  wrested  them  from  their  true  sense,  they  be¬ 
lieved  that  they  were  submitting  themselves  to  their 
teaching.  We  moderns  make  no  such  claim.  We 


140 


ESSAYS 


take  the  New  Testament  and  ask  what  it  has  for  us. 
We  find  the  story  of  Jesus  and  of  his  wonderful 
teaching.  We  find  the  writings  of  persons  who  had 
been  brought  directly  or  indirectly  under  the  influ¬ 
ence  of  this  personality.  They  tell  us  what  they 
thought  of  Jesus  and  how  they  understood  his  work. 
While  they  do  this  they  themselves  utter  inspiring 
words  of  religious  thought  and  feeling.  We  read  it 
all,  and  we  make  up  our  own  minds  as  to  the  meaning 
of  this  great  life,  its  meaning  for  us  and  for  the  world. 
In  other  words,  the  New  Testament  gives  us  a  fact 
which  we  explain  in  our  way,  as  the  New  Testament 
writers  explained  it  their  way.  We  do  not  even  feel 
bound  to  accept  as  genuine  all  the  sayings  that  the 
New  Testament  puts  into  the  mouth  of  Jesus.  It  is 
related  of  Dr.  Putnam,  of  Roxbury,  that  when  some 
one  once  asked  him  how  he  understood  a  certain 
expression  which  Jesus  is  reported  to  have  used,  he 
thought  a  moment  and  then  replied,  “  I  don’t  believe 
he  said  it.  It  does  not  sound  like  him.”  I  may  be 
wrong,  but  I  doubt  if  there  is  any  liberal  theologian 
of  any  name  who  would  hesitate  to  treat  some  pas¬ 
sages  in  a  similar  way.  When  this  result  has  been 
reached,  the  special  authority  of  the  Bible  has  passed 
away. 

This  tendency  exists  more  widely  than  one  might 
at  first  suppose.  Indeed,  it  is  impossible  to  say  how 
far  the  church  is  permeated  by  it.  A  few  weeks  ago 
a  preacher  came  from  the  West  to  New  York  and 
thundered  against  the  laxity  of  our  modern  preach¬ 
ing.  He  was  right  so  far  as  his  standard  of  measure¬ 
ment  was  concerned  ;  but  I  did  not  notice  that  his 
well-meant  effort  called  out  much  response  except 
derision.  I  have  recently  seen  in  a  newspaper  from 


NATURALISM  AND  ITS  RESULTS  141 

another  part  of  the  country  a  sermon,  in  which  the 
preacher  was  defending  the  story  of  the  miracle  by 
which  Joshua  made  the  sun  stand  still  that  he  might 
finish  his  battle  by  daylight.  The  preacher  seemed 
to  feel  the  force  of  some  of  the  objections  that  had 
been  urged  against  the  story,  but  lightened  the  mat¬ 
ter  by  saying  that  there  was  a  tremendous  hailstorm 
which  darkened  the  sky,  and  that  the  miracle  con¬ 
sisted  in  dissipating  the  cloud.  The  good  man 
thought  that  he  was  defending  the  Biblical  story, 
but  the  spirit  of  modernity  had  touched  him  and  he 
denied  the  account  as  really  as  if  he  had  substituted 
another  in  its  place. 

This  change  of  which  I  have  been  speaking  is,  as 
I  have  intimated,  the  greatest  that  has  taken  place 
in  the  whole  history  of  the  church.  It  came  sud¬ 
denly,  yet  so  quietly  that  we  hardly  realize  that  any¬ 
thing  remarkable  has  taken  place.  Those  who  have 
not  yet  felt  in  their  own  experience  the  touch  of  the 
new  era  recognize  this  aspect  of  modern  religious 
life,  but  they  do  not  realize  its  importance.  They 
think  that  it  is  something  that  can  be  ended  by  a 
few  heresy-trials.  It  is  as  if  a  snowbank  in  the 
spring  should  fancy  that  it  could  remain  in  undis¬ 
turbed  peace  as  soon  as  it  could  get  rid  of  the  few 
drops  of  water  that  are  oozing  out  of  it. 

I  need  not  recall  the  manner  in  which  the  faith  of 
the  church  has  been  held  in  subjection  all  these  cen¬ 
turies.  First  there  was  the  authority  of  the  church 
itself,  putting  down  heresy  by  fire  and  sword.  Then, 
at  the  time  of  the  Reformation,  the  absolute  and 
definite  authority  of  the  Bible  was  put  in  the  place 
of  that  of  the  church.  It  was  still  the  church  that 
decided  what  it  was  that  the  Bible  taught,  but  it  was 


142 


ESSAYS 


the  authority  of  the  Bible  that  was  nominally  su¬ 
preme.  At  the  middle  of  this  century  there  was 
probably  hardly  a  Christian  of  any  name  that  did  not 
recognize  the  Bible  as  the  supreme  arbiter  in  regard 
to  all  questions  of  theology.  The  Unitarian  appealed 
to  this  authority  as  freely  as  did  his  opponents.  The 
Socinian  was  not  satisfied  till  he  had  forced  St.  Paul 
to  say  what  he  wanted  him  to  say,  even  if  the  rack 
had  to  be  used  in  the  process.  In  respect  to  his 
Christology  Channing  was  more  Pauline  than  his  op¬ 
ponents.  Now  what  a  change  has  taken  place  in  the 
so-called  advanced  portion  of  the  Christian  Church, 
whatever  name  it  may  bear !  We  have  theories 
of  the  Atonement  by  the  dozen.  We  have  schemes 
of  the  Trinity  which  are  constructed  on  a  wholly 
ideal  basis.  We  have  teachings  in  regard  to  the 
future  life  in  which  little  reference  is  made  to  the 
words  of  the  New  Testament.  This,  I  say,  is  a  most 
astounding  change.  It  has  come  to  its  fruition  in 
the  last  generation.  This  is  one  of  the  aspects  of 
this  period  that  mark  it  as  a  real  epoch  and  one  that 
will  be  recognized  as  such  by  the  future  student  of 
history. 

We  may  well  pause  to  consider  for  a  moment  what 
will  be  the  effect  of  this  change  when  it  shall  have 
become  more  fully  established.  We  often  hear  stu¬ 
dents  of  the  Bible  say  how  much  more  interesting 
they  find  it  under  the  new  conditions  of  study  than 
they  did  under  the  old.  This  is  doubtless  the  case. 
They  had  been  perplexed  by  contradictions.  They 
had  been  troubled  by  passages  that,  in  spite  of  all 
forcing,  would  say  what  they  ought  not  to  have  said. 
Indeed,  the  book  seemed  a  formless  aggregation  into 
which  they  found  it  impossible  to  introduce  order. 


NATURALISM  AND  ITS  RESULTS 


143 


Now  the  Bible  unfolds  itself.  It  is  seen  in  the  unity 
of  its  historic  development.  In  the  light  of  this 
higher  unity  there  is  no  longer  need  to  force  all  its 
contradictions  into  harmony.  Contradictions  are  to 
be  expected.  There  is  no  need  to  find  everywhere 
the  highest  truth.  Error  is  to  be  expected.  Even 
the  Gospels  may  have  failed  to  reproduce  in  all  cases 
accurately  the  words  of  Jesus.  Here  is  a  fascinating 
field  of  study.  The  book  still  contains  the  highest 
utterances  of  religion.  These  form  its  climax  but  do 
not  control  all  its  teaching.  No  wonder  that  the 
change  is  welcomed  and  that  the  Bible  is  more  inter¬ 
esting  than  it  was  before. 

We  must,  however,  recognize  the  fact  that  what  it 
has  gained  for  the  student  will  be  to  a  large  extent 
lost  for  the  general  reader.  As  these  views  in  regard 
to  the  Bible  become  popular  we  must  expect  it  to  lose 
in  popular  regard.  When  men  turned  to  its  pages  to 
learn  by  explicit  statements  precisely  what  they  were 
to  believe  in  regard  to  the  most  momentous  ques¬ 
tions  that  concerned  their  destiny,  when  they  sought 
thus  to  learn  whether,  unless  they  took  the  means 
provided  for  safety,  they  would  suffer  endless  torment 
in  another  life,  when  they  sought  to  know  what  were 
the  means  of  escape  provided  this  terrible  doctrine 
were  true,  or  to  learn  whether,  after  all,  there  were 
any  means  of  escape,  whether  they  were  not  in  the 
hands  of  an  awful  destiny  that  would  control  their 
fate  —  when  the  Bible  was  approached  with  questions 
such  as  these  it  could  indeed  command  an  interest 
which,  under  the  changed  conditions,  cannot  be  ex¬ 
pected  for  it.  Another,  and  perhaps  even  more 
widely  spread,  source  of  interest  will  have  passed 
away  as  the  newer  view  becomes  more  widely  recog- 


144 


ESSAYS 


nized.  The  Bible  has  long  been  popularly  regarded 
as  a  kind  of  fetish.  To  read  its  pages  was  in  itself 
a  work  of  merit  that  told  towards  one’s  final  accept¬ 
ance  at  the  day  of  doom.  It  made  comparatively 
little  difference  what  part  of  it  was  read,  if  only  some 
part  of  it  was  read.  This  view  of  the  Bible  is  pass¬ 
ing  away  in  the  light  of  the  new  comprehension  of  it. 

With  these  two  causes  which  have  contributed  to 
the  popular  interest  in  the  Bible  in  the  past  will  pass 
away  much  of  this  popular  interest.  While  the  book 
will  mean  more  to  the  thoughtful  and  spiritual,  we 
must  expect  that  the  more  popular  and  superficial 
interest  will  become  less,  if  it  does  not  entirely  pass 
away. 

I  would  not  speak  too  slightingly  of  the  sources 
of  interest  to  which  I  have  referred.  Whatever  the 
reason  for  which  men  read  the  Bible,  they  could  not 
wholly  fail  to  be  touched  by  the  power  of  its  inspira¬ 
tion.  Religion  derived  help  from  these  servants, 
that  at  first  sight  seem  so  unfitted  for  its  use.  This 
help  it  must  prepare  itself  in  the  future  to  forego. 
Like  other  books  the  Bible  must  appeal  to  a  constitu¬ 
ency  that  is  in  sympathy  with  it.  As  the  preacher 
is  no  longer  a  priest  wielding  supernatural  authority, 
but  a  man  uttering  his  best  thought  in  regard  to 
life,  and  doing  what  he  can  for  the  good  of  the  world, 
so  the  Bible  will  be  a  book  that  contains  an  inter¬ 
esting  presentation  of  the  history  of  religion  along 
particular  lines,  with  some  of  the  loftiest  moral  and 
religious  teachings  that  were  ever  uttered,  in  their 
original  form,  and  in  a  form  to  which  we  are  in¬ 
debted  for  much  of  what  is  best  in  our  lives.  Such 
interest  it  will  always  retain  for  those  to  whom  it 
specially  appeals.  How  different,  however,  is  this 


NATURALISM  AND  ITS  RESULTS 


145 


position  from  that  which  it  so  long  occupied  !  This 
result  is  unavoidable.  We  cannot  accept  the  view 
of  the  Bible  which  our  thought  has  reached,  and 
shrink  from  the  legitimate  and  necessary  result  of 
this  view.  Already  we  see  illustrations  of  this  re¬ 
sult  even  in  our  theological  seminaries.  It  is  not 
merely  among  students  of  certain  heretical  sects  that 
the  study  of  Hebrew  and  Greek,  and  the  laborious 
investigation  into  Hebrew  and  Jewish  history  and 
thought,  hold  a  position  very  different  from  that 
which  they  once  held  for  the  Christian  minister. 
The  careful  study  of  the  Bible  means  less  for  many 
a  preacher  in  religious  bodies  widely  unlike.  We  may 
lament  this.  Indeed,  the  lessening  interest  in  the 
Bible  is  a  distinct  loss  for  the  church,  however  this 
loss  may  be  compensated  by  gains  in  other  directions. 
The  tendency  towards  this  is,  however,  an  unavoid¬ 
able  result  of  the  naturalistic  trend  of  the  times. 
The  preacher  or  teacher  of  genius  may  continue  to 
make  the  Bible  interesting,  but  to  the  mass  of  men 
much  of  the  interest  which  formerly  attached  to  it 
will  more  and  more  disappear. 

Of  the  two  scientific  discoveries  by  which  natural¬ 
ism  has  most  seriously  affected  religious  thought, 
one  was  the  recognition  of  the  fact  that  the  earth 
is  not  the  centre  of  the  universe.  The  other  was 
the  recognition  of  the  law  of  evolution  as  controlling 
the  development  of  life  upon  the  earth,  and,  indeed, 
the  development  of  the  earth  itself.  The  former 
taught  this  world  to  know  its  place  among  the 
mighty  orbs  that  crowd  the  realms  of  space.  The 
latter  taught  man  to  know  his  place  in  the  great 
procession  of  life  which  has  moved  across  the  earth 
during  the  countless  ages  of  its  history.  His  place 


146 


ESSAYS 


in  the  great  movement  is  a  supreme  one,  it  is  true. 
Under  him  are  “  the  fowl  of  the  air  and  the  fish  of 
the  sea  and  whatsoever  passeth  through  the  paths 
of  the  sea.”  Still  his  place  is  in  the  great  procession 
though  it  be  at  its  head.  The  former  of  these  dis¬ 
coveries  influenced  very  slowly  the  thought  of  the 
church.  The  dread  which  the  church  had  of  this 
great  transformation  in  the  thought  of  the  universe 
seemed  to  have  been  groundless.  Yet  surely,  how¬ 
ever  slowly,  the  new  universe  showed  that  with  all 
its  vastness  it  had  no  place  for  some  of  the  objects 
of  belief  which  the  church  had  most  cherished. 
The  latter,  the  doctrine  of  evolution,  performed  its 
work  more  suddenly,  yet  so  quietly  that  men  were 
hardly  aware  of  the  great  change  that  was  taking 
place. 

I  do  not  here  refer  to  the  use  that  has  been  made 
of  the  doctrine  of  evolution  to  destroy  belief  in  any 
positive  religion,  though  this  has  been  the  effect  that 
has  forced  itself  with  most  vividness  upon  the  recog¬ 
nition  of  the  world.  Even  where  this  result  has  not 
been  reached  it  must  be  admitted  that  with  the 
introduction  of  the  doctrine  of  evolution  the  church 
has  lost  one  obvious  and  effective  means  of  influence. 
The  case  is  the  same  as  we  found  it  in  regard  to  the 
new  estimate  of  the  Bible.  A  means  of  popular  im¬ 
pression  has  been  made  less  effective.  From  the 
time  when  men  began  to  question  in  regard  to  the 
origin  of  the  world,  the  marvelous  ingenuity  which 
seemed  to  be  displayed  in  the  myriad  of  fine  har¬ 
monies  and  adaptations  with  which  it  is  filled  have 
been  matters  of  wonder  and  admiration.  They  have 
pointed  to  the  master  mind,  to  the  great  mechanic, 
whose  marvelous  ingenuity  had  found  its  joy  in  the 


NATURALISM  AND  ITS  RESULTS  147 

invention  and  arrangement  of  all  these  things.  The 
most  prosaic  minds  were  driven  to  the  recognition  of 
this  display  of  power  and  wisdom.  Now  we  are  told 
that  all  this  countless  multitude  of  what  had  seemed 
wonderful  contrivances  is  the  result  of  the  working  of 
some  law  or  principle  bound  up  within  the  nature  of 
things.  The  church  has  with  right  insisted  that  a 
change  of  method  does  not  really  change  the  nature 
of  the  fact,  that  the  results  are  there  and  need  an 
explanation  as  much  as  they  did  before.  It  remains, 
however,  that,  to  many,  growth  and  creation  are  too 
unlike  to  be  blended  in  a  single  thought.  The  for¬ 
mer  view  of  creation  seems  mechanical,  and  growth 
and  mechanism  appear  to  have  little  in  common. 

This  negative  effect  of  the  doctrine  of  evolution  is 
referred  to  simply  that  we  may  recognize  one  impor¬ 
tant  aspect  of  the  changed  conditions  of  the  world. 
What  I  wish,  however,  particularly  to  notice  is  the 
change  which  this  view  of  the  development  of  life 
has  had  upon  religion  itself.  By  some  the  new  view 
has  been  hailed  with  a  certain  relief.  I  remember 
the  moment,  as  long  ago  as  the  time  when  I  was 
in  the  Divinity  School,  when  I  felt  myself  mildly 
shocked  at  the  thought  of  an  ingenious  and  contriv¬ 
ing  Deity,  and  then  again  slightly  shocked  at  the 
idea  that  I  had  been  shocked  at  this.  To  such  feel¬ 
ings  as  these  the  doctrine  of  evolution  brought  a  cer¬ 
tain  relief.  It  would  be  difficult  to  say  what  is  pre¬ 
cisely  the  nature  of  this  relief.  The  facts  are  what 
they  were  before.  We  still  find  these  wondrous 
adaptations  ;  but,  after  all,  these  at  their  best  have 
no  specially  religious  significance.  I  will  illustrate 
this  by  reference  to  what  has  been  used  as  a  striking 
example  of  such  adaptations.  In  certain  of  the 


148 


ESSAYS 


Pacific  islands  there  are  moths  which  are  protected 
by  their  imitative  forms.  There  are  others  that  are 
protected  from  their  foes  by  their  extremely  disagree¬ 
able  taste.  These  are  brightly  colored  so  that  they 
may  be  recognized  from  afar,  and  thus  not  be  seized 
by  mistake.  Others  still,  that  do  not  possess  this  dis¬ 
agreeable  taste,  are  protected  by  their  resemblance 
to  those  that  have  this.  It  is  urged  that  the  small¬ 
ness  of  the  number  of  those  thus  protected,  and  the 
difficulties  in  the  way  of  the  attainment  of  this  result, 
make  the  case  one  of  peculiar  interest  as  illustrating 
the  principle  of  design  in  the  creation  of  the  world, 
as  being  a  special  adaptation  of  means  to  ends. 
Even  Dr.  Martineau  makes  such  use  of  it  in  his 
“  Study  of  Religion.”  Yet  when  we  look  more 
closely  at  the  matter  it  is  difficult  to  find  any  specially 
religious  significance  in  the  fact  that  by  this  ingenious 
trick  a  few  moths  are  protected  from  foes  who  are 
with  equal,  if  less  fanciful,  ingenuity  furnished  with 
weapons  for  their  destruction.  Such  illustrations  of 
restricted  teleology  have,  doubtless,  a  place  in  a  large 
scientific  view  of  the  history  of  the  world,  but  the  doc¬ 
trine  of  evolution  has  made  this  place  a  comparatively 
subordinate  one. 

More  important  than  these  examples  of  special 
adaptation  is  the  view  of  the  world  which  is  given  us 
by  that  naturalism  which  would  exclude  all  interfer¬ 
ence  from  without.  This  shows  us  that  from  the 
beginning  of  anything  that  may  be  called  the  earth 
there  has  been  a  mighty  and  onward  movement, 
stretching  from  the  whirling  ether  up  to  the  loftiest 
spiritual  life.  This  brings  us  into  the  presence  of  a 
spiritual  power  of  which  the  ingenious  adaptations 
that  have  been  referred  to  know  little,  and  from 


NATURALISM  AND  ITS  RESULTS  149 

which  they  derive  whatever  significance  for  religion 
they  may  possess. 

The  thought  in  which  religion  has  expressed  this 
changed  relation  is  that  of  the  divine  immanence. 
This  thought  is  certainly  not  a  new  one,  but  it  has 
become  suddenly  a  popular  one.  The  view  of  the 
world  presented  by  the  doctrine  of  evolution  made  it 
under  some  form  or  other  an  essential  element  of  the 
religious  idea.  As  long  as  it  was  possible  to  believe  in 
the  theory  of  special  creations,  each  new  shape  and  each 
new  adaptation  being  a  direct  product  of  the  divine 
contrivance  and  will,  it  was  possible  to  think  of  a 
deity  controlling  the  world  from  the  outside.  The 
world  could  not  have  been  created  by  a  single  act  of 
the  divine  power.  Readjustments  were  continually 
needed.  The  divine  hand  must  be  continually  in¬ 
troduced  into  the  scene  to  add  new  pieces  to  the 
collection  or  to  readjust  the  old.  There  was  no  con¬ 
tinuity  of  movement  except  an  ideal  one  ;  thus  the 
whole  could  be  managed  from  without.  With  the 
doctrine  of  evolution  this  view  became  unthinkable. 
Either  the  world  must  have  been  started  on  its  way 
by  a  single  act  of  divine  power,  a  seed-corn  cast  into 
the  realms  of  space ;  or  there  must  be  a  divine 
power  ever  working  with  it  and  within  it.  The 
former  view  is  impossible,  for  as  this  seed-corn 
develops  ever  more  into  a  higher  spiritual  life  and 
ideal  beauty,  whence  could  it  have  received  these 
out  of  the  emptiness  of  space  ? 

The  term  Divine  Immanence  is  thus  one  that  the 
new  condition  of  things,  which  science  has  forced 
upon  our  thought,  has  made  unavoidable.  The 
words  have  become  almost  commonplace.  I  imagine 
that  many  use  them  who  have  a  very  vague  notion 


i5o 


ESSAYS 


of  their  meaning.  Indeed,  definiteness  of  meaning, 
in  the  most  strict  sense  of  the  term,  can  hardly  be 
given  them  except  by  the  philosophic  mind  that  has 
formed  for  itself  a  distinct  scheme  of  the  universe. 
Unhappily  these  complete  schemes  are  apt  to  resem¬ 
ble  somewhat  the  hortus  siccus  from  the  contents  of 
which  all  real  life  has  departed. 

For  one,  I  cannot  think  that  this  vagueness  is  ne¬ 
cessarily  a  disadvantage.  How  can  we  expect  to  for¬ 
mulate  the  great  realities  of  the  world  in  a  way  that 
shall  satisfy  the  acute  understanding  ?  The  words, 
though  vague,  mean  much.  They  mean  much  nega¬ 
tively.  They  make  the  thought  of  a  mechanical  re¬ 
lation  between  God  and  the  world  impossible.  On 
the  other  hand,  they  have  a  distinct  positive  mean¬ 
ing.  They  suggest  that  there  is  a  divine  power  at 
the  heart  of  the  universe  ;  that  there  is  a  divine  life 
of  which  our  lives  in  some  poor  way  may  partake  ; 
that  the  end  towards  which  the  world  is  pressing  is 
the  divine  ideal. 

As  was  the  case  with  the  changed  view  of  the  au¬ 
thority  of  the  church  and  of  the  Bible,  so  here  reli¬ 
gion  has  lost  an  effective  instrument.  The  thought 
of  a  God  over  against  the  world,  creating,  adjusting, 
modifying,  is  one  that  is  fitted  to  take  hold  of  the 
popular  imagination  ;  and  for  this  reason  religion 
may  long  continue  to  use  the  less  accurate  forms 
of  speech  which  this  view  suggests.  Yet  the  other 
phase  of  thought,  that  of  the  divine  immanence,  is, 
after  all,  one  that  may  come  closer  to  the  hearts  of 
those  that  can  receive  it.  It  is  a  thought  that  is  in 
accord  with  the  doctrine  of  the  Holy  Spirit  which  is 
the  most  profound  teaching  of  the  church. 

We  have  seen  the  change  that  naturalism  has 


NATURALISM  AND  ITS  RESULTS  151 

caused  in  the  thought  of  authority  in  religion  and  in 
that  of  the  divine  presence  in  the  world.  We  must 
now  glance  briefly  at  another  change  hardly  less  im¬ 
portant  than  these.  I  refer  to  the  change  in  the 
thought  of  religion  itself  and  of  its  relation  to  life. 

In  earlier  days  religion  was  urged  as  the  great  end 
and  aim  of  all  living.  By  religion,  as  it  was  thus  in¬ 
sisted  upon,  was  meant  the  personal  relation  of  the 
soul  to  God  and  the  direct  preparation  for  the  future 
life.  Religion,  as  thus  regarded,  was  something  that 
could  be  sharply  defined.  A  line  which  it  was  easy 
to  recognize  separated  the  converted  from  the  un¬ 
converted.  In  my  youth  it  was  the  habit  of  the 
preacher  to  make  a  separate  appeal  to  each  of  these 
classes.  At  least  this  was  the  habit  except  in  the 
heretical  churches.  The  sinner  was  bidden  to  pre¬ 
pare  for  death  or  to  prepare  to  meet  his  God.  The 
church  was  regarded  primarily  as  an  ark  of  safety. 
To  be  saved  was  to  be  safe. 

Through  the  influence  of  naturalism  a  vast  change 
is  taking  place  in  regard  to  all  these  relations.  Re¬ 
ligion,  in  the  sense  in  which  it  was  just  defined,  is 
not  the  great  and  supreme  end  in  living.  In  a  pro¬ 
founder  and  broader  sense  this  claim  may  indeed  be 
made  for  it  ;  but  in  the  special  sense  in  which  the 
word  is  generally  used,  religion  is  coming  to  be  re¬ 
garded  as  it  was  by  Schleiermacher,  as  the  music  to 
which  we  march.  It  represents,  indeed,  the  culmina¬ 
tion  of  life,  but  only  as  it  lifts  to  a  higher  plane  the 
ordinary  relations  of  life.  The  child  does  not  live 
merely  for  the  sake  of  his  parent,  or  even  to  come 
into  closer  union  with  him  ;  yet  to  a  loving  child  the 
love  of  father  and  mother  is  the  atmosphere  in  which 
it  lives.  We  are  not  to  live  in  this  world  merely  to 


152 


ESSAYS 


prepare  for  another  life,  although  right  living  in  the 
world  may  be  the  best  preparation  for  such  a  life. 
This  life  of  ours,  this  common  every-day  life  upon 
the  earth,  has  its  own  worth.  It,  while  it  lasts,  is 
the  most  important  thing.  We  are  not  to  be  look¬ 
ing  forward  to  the  moment  when  time  shall  cease  and 
eternity  shall  begin.  We  are  now  living  the  eternal 
life  as  truly  as  we  shall  ever  live  it  in  the  ages  to 
come.  At  least  we  may  now  live  it,  if  we  will  lift  our 
hearts  and  thoughts  to  the  eternal  realities.  Love 
and  the  companionship  and  the  service  of  love, 
truth  and  the  search  for  it,  beauty  and  the  joy  in  it 
• —  these  are  always  the  same  in  this  world  or  in 
any  other.  Religion  does  not  merely  look  forward. 
It  looks  around  and  it  looks  up. 

I  have  named  the  three  results  of  the  naturalistic 
view  of  the  world,  one  after  the  other,  as  if  they  had 
no  relation  with  one  another,  no  bond  of  interdepend¬ 
ence.  A  moment’s  thought  would  show  that  what 
I  have  put  in  the  centre  of  the  discussion  —  the 
thought  of  the  divine  immanence  —  would  require 
the  two  others  by  which,  in  this  treatment,  it  is 
flanked.  An  immanent  God  is  an  omnipresent  God, 
and  an  omnipresent  God  means  a  God  who  cannot 
be  bound  by  any  one  form  of  arbitrary  authority  or 
any  one  sphere  of  life. 

However  helpful  to  the  religious  life  these  results 
may  be,  I  repeat  that  they  have  been  procured  at  a 
great  cost.  This  cost  is,  as  we  have  seen,  the  loss  of 
certain  means  of  influence  by  which  the  church  has 
to  a  large  extent  maintained  its  supremacy  in  the 
past.  Henceforth  Christianity  will  stand  without  the 
explicit  supernatural  authority  by  which  it  has  com¬ 
pelled  the  allegiance  of  the  world,  without  the  external 


NATURALISM  AND  ITS  RESULTS 


153 


God  to  whom  it  has  appealed,  and  must  be  content 
to  take  a  humbler  place  in  relation  to  the  affairs  of  life. 

The  thoughts  that  I  have  brought  together  in  this 
condensed  and  abstract  way  may  very  easily  be  mis¬ 
understood.  They  may  appear  at  every  point  to  show 
the  marks  of  vast  exaggeration.  If  the  words  which 
I  have  used  should  be  taken  in  their  simple  and  lit¬ 
eral  meaning,  they  might,  perhaps,  be  justly  accused 
of  exaggeration.  I  may  seem  to  have  done  dishonor 
to  the  religion  of  the  past.  I  may  seem  to  imply 
that  religion  is  just  beginning  its  real  life.  On  the 
other  hand,  I  may  seem  to  have  exaggerated  the 
extent  of  the  changes  to  which  I  have  referred.  I 
suppose  that  I  have  exaggerated  them.  It  is  only 
in  a  small  portion  of  the  church  that  these  changes 
have  been  consciously  made,  although  this  small  por¬ 
tion  extends  through  various  bodies  bearing  various 
names. 

What  I  have  wished  to  do  has  been  to  draw  with 
a  free  hand  the  picture  of  certain  marked  tendencies 
of  the  time  which  in  these  later  years  have  come 
to  a  sudden  and  marked  manifestation,  and  have 
been  the  result  of  the  naturalistic  tendencies  of 
thought  that  to  many  have  seemed  antagonistic  to 
any  religious  faith.  Religion  was  not  born  with 
these.  In  every  form  of  the  religious  life,  in  every 
sect  of  Christendom  through  the  whole  history  of 
the  church,  and  among  many  who  have  stood  in  no 
relation  with  the  church,  who  have  never  even  heard 
of  Christianity,  true  religion  has  been  found.  Our 
New  England  church,  for  instance,  in  spite  of  the 
absurdities  and  horrors  which  entered  into  its  teach¬ 
ing,  has  been  a  mighty  influence  in  the  creation  of 
strong  and  noble  lives. 


154 


ESSAYS 


What  is  passing  away  is  largely  the  armor  with 
which  Christianity  has  clothed  itself,  the  weapons 
with  which  it  has  fought  its  battles.  Though  it 
must  forego  these  it  may  be  none  the  weaker  for 
the  change.  It  has  doubtless  lost  a  certain  popular 
power  by  which  it  has  drawn  to  itself  many  whose 
interest  has  been  in  the  form  rather  than  in  the 
heart  of  religion,  but  the  weapon  by  which  Chris¬ 
tianity  has  won  its  real  victories  remains.  This  has 
been  the  sword  of  the  spirit.  Hearts  aflame  with 
Christian  love  and  aspiration  have  lighted  a  kindred 
flame  in  other  hearts.  Wherever  such  hearts  have 
been  found,  if  these  were  connected  with  any  touch 
of  genius  of  utterance,  a  response  has  never  failed. 
The  high-churchman  in  the  pomp  of  his  service,  the 
Calvinist  with  his  iron  creed,  Theodore  Parker  with 
his  faith  that  seemed  to  many  so  bare,  the  Quaker 
in  his  silence,  even  the  far-off  Buddhist  with  his  creed 
that  seems  so  dark  —  all  of  these,  so  far  as  their 
hearts  were  filled  with  human  love  and  sympathy  as 
well  as  with  enthusiasm  for  the  thought  that  had 
inspired  them,  have  found  followers  enthusiastic  like 
themselves.  I  do  not  mean  that  all  forms  of  reli¬ 
gion  are  alike  in  power,  but  that  the  form  is  of  less 
account  than  the  spirit  that  is  clothed  by  the  form. 

Let  us  trust  that,  when  the  changes  to  which  I 
have  referred  have  been  thoroughly  accomplished, 
this  power  will  remain.  The  spiritual  power  and 
authority  of  the  Christ  will  remain.  Christianity  will 
have  cast  aside  the  cumbrous  armor  in  which,  though 
only  in  part  through  which,  it  has  won  its  victories. 
Let  us  trust  that  like  the  youthful  David  it  will  find 
the  simpler  weapon,  natural  to  its  hand,  more  effec¬ 
tive  than  the  old,  which  to  the  superficial  view  may 


NATURALISM  AND  ITS  RESULTS 


1 55 


seem  more  effective.  It  will  have  a  less  numerous 
following  than  before,  but  its  followers  will  be  those 
who  are  drawn  to  it  for  itself.  Every  such  diminu¬ 
tion  in  the  numbers  who  frequent  the  church  will 
tend  to  diminish  the  number  still  more,  for  the  public 
sentiment  that  took  church-going  for  granted  will 
lose  more  and  more  of  its  power.  The  church  will 
more  and  more  attract  those  to  whom  it  is  attractive, 
and  no  one  else.  The  church  will  take  its  place 
among  other  institutions  and  forces  and  no  longer 
stand  supreme  above  them  all.  It  is  possible,  how¬ 
ever,  there  will  be  no  less  real  religion  in  the  world 
than  there  was  before.  Perhaps  I  may  draw  an  illus¬ 
tration  from  the  university  with  which  I  am  con¬ 
nected.  A  few  years  ago  attendance  at  the  morning 
religious  service  in  Harvard  College  was  required. 
It  was  a  splendid  sight,  that  of  the  young  men  pour¬ 
ing  into  the  chapel  every  morning,  filling  every  seat 
of  floor  and  gallery.  During  the  service  they  pre¬ 
served  a  respectful  attitude  that  might  well  have  been 
devout.  Now  that  such  attendance  is  no  longer  re¬ 
quired,  this  attractive  spectacle  exists  no  more ;  yet 
no  one  doubts  that  there  is  at  least  as  much  religious 
life  in  the  college  as  there  was  before.  Those  who 
know  most  intimately  the  condition  of  things  would 
insist  that  the  religious  life  in  the  college  is  more 
intense  than  it  was  in  the  older  days.  The  chapel  ser¬ 
vice  itself  is  transformed.  Instead  of  being  adapted 
to  the  slender  patience  of  the  attendants  it  has  be¬ 
come  ornate  and  beautiful.  The  illustration  from 
university  life  may  be  extended.  The  elective  system 
has  transformed  the  method  of  instruction.  If  a 
teacher  would  have  students  he  must  not  go  through 
a  bare  routine ;  he  must  teach.  Under  the  natural- 


156 


ESSAYS 


istic  tendencies  of  the  time  attendance  at  church  is 
no  longer  required  by  public  sentiment.  It  can  no 
longer  be  urged  as  an  opus  operatum  by  which  salva¬ 
tion  from  endless  torment  may  be  secured.  Religion 
has  become  an  elective  in  the  great  university  of  the 
world.  The  church  must  recognize  the  extent  and 
meaning  of  this  change.  Instead  of  bemoaning  its 
loss  of  prestige  it  should  bravely  and  wisely  adapt 
itself  to  the  new  conditions.  If  it  does  this,  its  work, 
though  less  imposing  as  looked  upon  from  without, 
may  be  even  more  really  effective  than  it  has  been 
in  the  past.  It  will  have  cast  aside  the  more  or  less 
theatrical  adjuncts  of  its  work,  and  may  devote  itself 
to  the  serious  business  to  which  it  is  called  —  the 
stimulus  and  nurture  of  the  spiritual  life.  Perhaps, 
though  fewer  may  respond  to  its  appeal  than  in 
former  times,  there  may  be  no  less  real  religion  in 
the  world  than  there  was  then.  Religion,  at  its  best, 
is  not  the  going  to  church  under  the  stress  of  a 
public  sentiment  or  of  habit.  It  is  not  trust  in  an 
infinite  ally  who  will  bring  help  in  the  struggle  with 
rivals  or  enemies.  It  is  not  the  seeking  to  escape 
from  an  outward  Hell  or  to  reach  an  outward  Heaven. 
It  is  the  love  of  what  is  actually  divine  and  the  yield¬ 
ing  one's  self  to  be  its  instrument. 


VII 


INSTINCT  AND  REASON 

The  terms  Reason  and  Instinct  have  been  used  in 
a  way  to  imply  that  instinct  specially  belongs  to  the 
animal  and  reason  specially  to  man.  The  animal,  it  is 
said,  acts  by  instinct ;  man  acts  by  reason.  Indeed, 
such  recent  authorities  as  the  Century  Dictionary  and 
the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica  in  defining  instinct  lay 
the  emphasis  upon  its  relation  to  the  animal.  Such 
a  definition  of  the  word  is  perhaps  correct,  so  far  as 
the  dictionary  is  concerned,  for  the  purpose  of  a 
dictionary  is  to  explain  the  meaning  commonly  at¬ 
tached  to  words  rather  than  to  state  what  they 
ought  to  mean ;  but  any  account  of  instinct  which 
makes  it  fill  a  more  important  place  in  the  life  of 
the  animal  than  in  that  of  man  is  in  error.  It  may, 
indeed,  fill  a  larger  place  proportionally,  but  so  far  as 
the  actual  number  and  significance  of  instincts  are 
concerned,  the  animal  is  far  behind  the  man.  Pro¬ 
fessor  James  insists  upon  this  fact  in  the  interesting 
chapter  on  instinct  in  his  Psychology.  He  there 
presents  such  a  number  of  human  instincts  as  I 
have  no  doubt  has  surprised  many  readers  ;  yet  he 
does  not  claim  to  have  presented  a  complete  list,  and 
indeed,  many  of  the  most  important  instincts  are 
not  named  by  him,  and  a  large  class  of  them  is  not 
definitely  referred  to.  The  principal  object  of  this 
essay  will  be  to  illustrate,  in  a  general  way,  the  part 


1 58 


ESSAYS 


that  instinct  plays  in  human  life  and  the  part  that 
reason  plays  in  the  life  of  the  animal.  In  illustration 
of  this  latter  I  wish  to  bring  together  certain  illus¬ 
trations  of  animal  intelligence  that  I  have  personally 
witnessed  or  that  I  have  received  at  first  hand  from 
friends  who  have  witnessed  them. 

Instincts  in  general  may  be  loosely  divided  into 
two  classes :  those  that  are  more  superficial,  the 
result  of  the  experience  or  the  habit  of  ancestors^ 
and  those  that  are  more  closely  bound  up  with  the 
life  itself.  The  principle  of  development  might  seem 
to  take  away  the  possibility  of  such  a  distinction,  for 
according  to  this  all  instincts  would  be  thus  in¬ 
herited.  Still  I  think  that  the  distinction  may  be 
practically  recognized.  The  very  lowest  forms  of 
animal  life  appear  to  possess  certain  instincts  by 
which  that  which  conforms  to  their  nature  attracts 
them,  and  that  which  does  not,  repels.  Indeed,  with¬ 
out  instincts  such  as  these,  animal  life  would  not  be 
possible.  In  these  is  the  germ  of  the  instinct  of 
attack,  defense,  or  retreat  that  is  found  in  the  higher 
animals.  This  was  inherited,  it  is  true,  from  one 
generation  to  another,  but  it  was  as  life  was  in¬ 
herited —  the  life  which  finds  in  this  its  manifesta¬ 
tion.  To  man  the  instinct  of  thought  is  essential. 
It  constitutes  the  special  life  of  humanity,  and  in  the 
very  nature  of  thought  are  bound  up  some  of  the 
higher  ideal  elements  to  which  I  shall  refer. 

There  is  something  curious  in  the  inheritance  of 
the  more  superficial  instincts.  If  the  act  which 
originated  the  instinct  was  done  by  reason,  it  seems 
strange  that  it  should  have  been  inherited.  If  it 
was  not  by  accident,  the  instinct  would  seem  to  be 
already  established.  The  best  illustration  of  the 


INSTINCT  AND  REASON 


*59 


matter  that  I  have  noticed  is  found  in  the  fact  that 
very  rarely,  when  the  winter  is  specially  cold,  gros¬ 
beaks  appear  in  our  streets.  I  remember  to  have 
observed  them  only  once  or  twice,  though  they  may 
have  appeared  more  frequently.  Now  it  is  easy  to 
suppose  that  if  they  were  driven  to  us  regularly  by 
a  succession  of  cold  winters,  an  instinct  to  migrate 
might  be  established. 

It  is  very  interesting  to  notice  the  instincts  that 
in  many  animals,  in  spite  of  the  centuries  of  domesti¬ 
cation,  represent  to  us  still  the  habits  of  their  wild 
life.  An  obvious  example  is  that  of  the  turning  of 
a  dog  when  he  lies  down.  All  these  years  of  domes¬ 
tication  and  of  frequent  petting  have  hardly  begun, 
except  in  certain  marked  cases,  to  make  the  cat  enter 
into  close  personal  relations  with  us.  The  cat  is,  as 
of  old,  fond  of  her  familiar  haunt,  and  still  lives  her 
almost  solitary  life.  The  dog,  on  the  other  hand, 
inherits  from  the  ancestral  relation  to  the  pack  a 
social  disposition  which  fits  him  to  be  the  companion 
of  man.  The  horse,  when  on  the  road,  still  hurries 
after  a  horse  that  he  chances  to  see  before  him,  as  his 
ancestry  used  to  press  forward  that  they  might  not 
be  left  behind  by  their  companions  ;  and  he  still  starts 
at  anything  unusual,  for  it  was  upon  this  sensitive¬ 
ness  to  anything  unwonted  in  the  environment  that 
his  wild  ancestry  depended  for  their  continued  exist¬ 
ence.  How  many  of  the  habits  of  the  lower  and 
wilder  life  remain  even  in  man !  How  foreign  to  the 
ideal  humanity  is  the  love  of  the  chase  and  of  war ! 
What  passions  easily  aroused  remain  to  testify  to  the 
fact  that  man  is  not  yet  humanized !  while  from 
among  these,  growing  out  of  the  nature  of  thought 
and  that  of  humanity,  are  slowly  arising  those  higher 


i6o 


ESSAYS 


instincts  which  are  also,  in  part,  a  matter  of  inherit¬ 
ance  from  men  who  have  done  good  service  for  their 
home  and  their  country,  for  truth  and  right. 

I  shall  in  this  discussion  assume  that,  so  far  as 
animal  and  human  life  is  concerned,  reason  and  in¬ 
stinct,  with  certain  important  qualifications,  divide 
the  field  between  them.  One  of  these  is  found  in 
the  fact  that  there  are  certain  quasi  instincts  that 
are  the  result  not  of  inheritance  but  of  habit.  The 
individual  acts  without  any  conscious  will  or  motive. 
I  suppose  that  in  the  ordinary  use  of  the  word  acts 
thus  performed  would  hardly  be  called  instinctive. 
The  etymological  significance  of  the  word  would 
justify  the  popular  use  of  it,  by  which  instinct  de¬ 
scribes  something  innate.  There  is  also  a  class  of 
abnormal  acts  which  should  be  noticed  in  this  con¬ 
nection  —  acts  which  cannot  be  called  instinctive, 
but  yet  throw  great  light  upon  the  feeling  that 
prompts  the  instinctive  act.  I  refer  to  cases  in 
which  it  is  impressed  upon  the  hypnotic  subject  that 
something  must  be  done  by  him  or  left  undone  after 
he  has  emerged  into  his  normal  condition.  It  is  im¬ 
pressed  upon  a  student,  for  instance,  that  the  next 
day  at  a  certain  hour  he  shall  call  upon  his  professor 
and  ask  him  to  go  to  walk.  The  man  goes  at  the 
appointed  time,  but  he  cannot  tell  why  he  goes.  His 
going  is  thus  an  irrational  or,  perhaps  better,  an  un- 
rational  act.  Such  qualifications,  however,  and  any 
similar  ones  that  might  possibly  be  found,  do  not 
practically  affect  the  general  position  which  I  have 
taken,  that,  on  the  whole,  reason  and  instinct  divide 
the  field  between  them.  It  would  be  possible,  in¬ 
deed,  so  to  state  what  is  meant  as  to  guard  it  against 
such  exceptions.  I  do  not  care,  however,  to  devise 


INSTINCT  AND  REASON 


161 


cumbrous  definitions,  and  will  leave  the  matter  as  it 
was  first  stated. 

At  the  opening  of  his  chapter  on  instinct  Professor 
James  says  :  “Instinct  is  usually  defined  as  the  faculty 
of  acting  in  such  a  way  as  to  produce  certain  ends, 
without  foresight  of  the  ends  and  without  previous 
education  in  the  performance.”  That,  as  Professor 
James  says,  this  is  the  sense  in  which  the  word  is 
commonly  used,  does  not  admit  of  doubt ;  and  it  cer¬ 
tainly  covers  a  very  large  number  of  cases  of  instinct. 
Such  manifestations  of  instinct  may  be  described  by 
saying  that  in  performing  them  the  agent  acts  as 
though  he  knew  something  which  he  does  not  know. 
An  example  of  this  often  referred  to  is  that  of  the 
fly  which  lays  its  eggs  in  the  flesh  on  which  its  larvae 
will  feed,  though  it  does  not  itself  feed  on  flesh. 
Another  example  often  named  is  that  of  the  bird  of 
passage,  which  seems  to  know  that  a  cold  winter  is 
coming  in  the  North,  but  that  if  it  goes  South  it  will 
have  an  uninterrupted  summer.  Such  acts  are  per¬ 
formed  without  foresight,  simply  because  each  at  its 
fitting  time  seems  the  most  attractive  thing  that  can 
be  done.  I  say  that  these  acts  are  performed  without 
foresight,  because  this  is  what  every  one  says,  espe¬ 
cially  those  writers  who  can  best  claim  to  be  called 
scientific.  I  confess,  however,  that  this  is  a  matter 
about  which  I  know  nothing,  and  I  doubt  if  the  most 
scientific  know  any  more.  Animals  seem  sometimes 
to  manifest  powers  which  we  do  not  possess.  A  dog, 
a  cat,  or  a  bee,  no  matter  by  what  tortuous  paths 
it  may  have  been  carried,  when  set  at  liberty  is  able 
to  make  a  straight  line  for  its  home.  I  doubt  if 
human  reason  could  accomplish  such  a  feat,  unless 
it  were  aided  to  some  extent  by  the  signs  of  the 


1 62 


ESSAYS 


heavens.  It  is  not  impossible  that  the  animal  may 
possess  also  some  clairvoyant  power  to  which  its  acts 
are  more  transparent  than  they  seem  to  us  to  be.  I 
would  not  be  understood  to  defend  such  a  view  of 
instinct  as  I  have  been  hinting  at.  I  wish  what  I 
have  said  to  be  regarded  simply  as  a  confession  of 
ignorance ;  and  throughout  the  rest  of  this  discussion 
if  I  have  occasion  to  refer  to  the  matter  I  shall  use 
the  language  which  is  now  common  and  approved. 

What  I  would  call  attention  to,  however,  is  the 
fact  that  this  common  definition  of  instinct,  which 
Professor  James  quotes  as  such  without  indorsing  it, 
covers  only  a  small  portion  of  instincts  —  namely, 
those  which  act  as  means  to  ends  that  are  not  fore¬ 
seen.  Many  instincts  are  destitute  of  this  forward 
reach.  Take,  for  instance,  some  of  those  to  which 
Professor  James  refers  in  his  enumeration  of  human 
instincts,  such  as  jealousy,  sympathy,  and  secretive¬ 
ness.  Each  of  these  is  complete  in  itself.  The  jeal¬ 
ous  person  does  not  manifest  jealousy  as  a  means  for 
accomplishing  some  unknown  end.  Jealousy  knows 
very  well  what  it  is  about.  The  acts  to  which  it 
prompts  have  no  significance  which  it  does  not  recog¬ 
nize.  Like  all  moods  it  affirms  itself,  to  the  exclu¬ 
sion  of  saner  feelings  ;  but  this  does  not  imply  any 
blindness  to  what  it  is  doing.  It  is  simply  an  impulse 
to  perform  certain  acts,  an  impulse  that  is  roused  by 
certain  appearances  or  events  acting  upon  a  some¬ 
what  morbid  personality ;  or,  when  facts  justify  it, 
the  impulse  may  come  from  something  acting  upon  a 
healthy  personality.  The  same  is  true  of  sympathy. 
There  is  nothing  occult  about  this.  It  is  simply  the 
reaction  of  a  normal  mind  in  the  presence  of  suffering. 
Sympathy  prompts  to  acts,  and  the  agent  knows  as 


INSTINCT  AND  REASON 


163 

well  as  any  looker  on  what  is  the  significance  and  ten¬ 
dency  of  these  acts.  It  may  of  course  blunder  in  its 
methods,  just  as  a  man  may  blunder  in  the  methods 
by  which  he  seeks  to  accomplish  anything.  Yet 
jealousy  and  sympathy  are  rightly  called  instincts. 

From  the  examples  thus  given  it  will  be  seen  that 
the  definition  I  quoted  covers  only  a  very  limited 
field.  Neither  in  jealousy  nor  in  sympathy  does  the 
person  act  as  if  he  knew  something  which  he  does 
not  know.  It  is  obvious  that  such  examples  could 
be  multiplied  indefinitely. 

I  wish  to  call  special  attention  to  a  form  of  in¬ 
stinct  not  covered  by  the  definition  I  have  quoted, 
and  not  distinctly  recognized  in  any  discussion  of 
the  theme  that  has  fallen  under  my  notice.  The 
definition  refers  to  acts  that  to  the  actor  seem  to 
end  in  themselves,  while  they  are  really  the  means 
by  which  unforeseen  results  are  accomplished.  The 
class  of  instincts  to  which  I  would  now  refer  con¬ 
sists  of  those  which  suggest  the  ends  that  are  to 
be  sought.  This  form  of  instinct  is  more  marked  in 
man  than  in  the  lower  animals,  although  it  is  not  the 
exclusive  possession  of  man.  The  person  seeks  to 
accomplish  certain  ends,  but  can  give  no  reason  why 
these  particular  ends  are  sought  by  him.  If  you  ask 
what  particular  ends  are  here  referred  to,  I  answer : 
all  the  ends  which  are  pursued  by  men  as  ultimates, 
that  is,  without  regard  to  anything  to  which  they  may 
be  instrumental.  One  seeks,  for  instance,  happiness. 
If  you  should  ask  him  why  he  wants  to  be  happy,  he 
would  think  the  question  an  absurd  one.  In  fact,  the 
question  would  be  absurd  because  it  is  one  that  admits 
of  no  answer.  Sometimes,  indeed,  a  person  has  a 
reason  for  seeking  to  be  happy.  It  may  be  for  the 


ESSAYS 


164 

sake  of  others,  whom  his  sadness  would  make  more 
sad.  It  may  be  for  the  sake  of  self-discipline,  in  order 
to  correct  certain  morbid  tendencies.  In  these  cases 
it  is  not  the  passion  for  happiness  that  moves  him. 

The  objects  which  he  may  wish  to  accomplish  by 
cultivating  happiness  are  the  real  ends  which  he  is 
seeking  and  for  which  he  can  give  no  reason.  If  you 
should  ask  him  why  he  wishes  to  make  others  more 
cheerful,  the  question  would  seem  a  foolish  one.  If 
he  made  any  answer  he  would  perhaps  say  that  it  was 
because  he  loved  them,  which  would  be  saying  the 
same  thing  in  different  words.  To  love  another,  and 
to  desire  the  happiness  of  that  other,  amount  to 
pretty  much  the  same  thing.  At  least  one  of  these 
forms  an  element  of  the  other.  To  seek  happiness, 
then,  is  instinctive.  It  is  not  irrational  to  seek  happi¬ 
ness,  for  this  is  one  of  the  ends  which  our  nature 
sets  before  us.  One  can,  however,  give  no  reason 
why  he  sees  in  happiness  an  end  that  should  be 
sought.  In  one  case  of  the  kind  it  is  common  to 
recognize  an  instinct.  We  speak  of  the  instinct  of 
self-preservation.  It  has  been  denied  that  the  ani¬ 
mal  possesses  this,  because  it  knows  nothing  of  life 
or  death.  However  this  may  be,  in  man  this  instinct 
bears  undoubted  sway.  The  other  ultimate  ends 
which  men  seek  are  as  truly  instinctive  as  this. 

In  saying  that  men  seek  happiness  I  have  simply 
used  the  common  form  of  speech.  I  am  not  quite 
sure  that  it  is  correct.  Happiness  is  either  an  ab¬ 
stract  term  or  a  collective  term.  If  we  call  it  an 
abstraction  we  might  raise  the  doubt  whether  men 
really  seek  abstractions.  If  we  call  it  a  collective 
term,  we  might  doubt  whether  it  is  not  merely  the 
elements  that  are  summed  up  in  the  word  that  men 


INSTINCT  AND  REASON  165 

seek.  In  either  case  the  fact  would  remain  the 
same.  Whatever  ends  are  represented  by  the  term 
would  be  sought  for  their  own  sake,  with  no  reason 
beyond  themselves.  I  have  said  that  this  form  of 
instinct,  namely  the  seeking  to  accomplish  results 
that  are  ends  in  themselves,  for  the  seeking  of  which 
no  other  reason  could  be  given,  is  more  marked  in 
man  than  in  the  lower  animals.  By  this  I  meant 
simply  that  the  ends  sought  are  for  the  most  part 
more  distinctly  held  before  the  mind,  that  they  are 
seen  from  a  greater  distance,  and  that  more  varied 
means  are  brought  together  to  cooperate  in  the 
search.  The  animal,  no  less  than  man,  has,  how¬ 
ever,  ends  which  he  strives  to  accomplish  by  simple 
or  tortuous  ways.  Even  if  the  beast  had  as  much 
reason  as  man  he  could  not  explain  why  he  likes 
to  satisfy  his  hunger.  We  cannot  tell  why  any¬ 
thing  is  pleasant  and  desirable.  Whichever  way  we 
go  we  come  at  last  upon  the  brute  fact  which  admits 
of  no  explanation  or  justification.  Thus  we  may  say 
in  general  that  a  thing  is  not  desired  because  it 
seems  desirable  —  rather  it  seems  desirable  because 
it  is  desired. 

There  is  one  other  form  of  instinct  which  is  often 
less  easy  of  recognition  and  which  I  name  simply 
that  we  may,  so  far  as  possible,  cover  the  whole 
ground.  I  have  in  mind  the  cases  in  which  the  ani¬ 
mal  or  the  man  makes  use  of  instinctive  methods  to 
accomplish  ends  that  are  more  or  less  consciously 
sought.  This  form  of  instinct  may  perhaps  be  best 
recognized  in  cases  where  it  seems  to  go  astray. 
You  see,  for  instance,  a  horse  seeking  to  drink.  The 
water  is  frozen.  He  stamps  the  ice  with  his  foot, 
breaks  it  and  drinks.  The  stamping  on  the  ice  might 


ESSAYS 


1 66 

seem  to  be  an  act  of  reason ;  or  at  least  you  might 
think  that  he  had  done  the  same  thing  before,  at 
first,  possibly,  by  accident,  and  so  understood  what 
would  be  the  result  of  his  act.  Suppose,  however, 
the  water  is  not  frozen,  but  the  horse  cannot  get  at 
it  for  some  other  reason  :  either  his  harness  does 
not  allow  him  to  reach  quite  far  enough  ;  or  the 
water  is  too  shallow  to  be  drunk  with  ease  or  plea¬ 
sure.  Now  it  is  not  uncommon  to  see  a  horse  stamp 
the  water  in  both  these  cases.  I  have  seen  a  horse 
stamp  the  shallow  water  till  it  became  muddy  and 
undrinkable.  The  act  was  precisely  what  it  would 
naturally  be  if  there  were  ice  to  be  broken.  A 
domesticated  horse  in  our  part  of  the  world  would 
perhaps  never  have  occasion  to  break  ice  in  order  to 
get  water.  The  most  natural  explanation  of  the  act 
appears  to  me  to  be  that  it  is  of  the  same  kind  as 
that  of  the  dog  when,  before  lying  down,  he  turns 
round  and  round  as  though  he  were  making  a  bed. 
In  the  case  of  the  horse  it  suggests  the  time  when 
his  ancestors  in  their  wild  state  may  have  been  some¬ 
times  obliged  to  break  the  ice  before  they  could 
drink,  as  the  ancestors  of  the  dog  used  to  make  a 
bed  for  themselves  in  the  grass  or  rushes.  The 
horse  knew  very  well  what  he  wanted.  He  wanted 
to  drink.  Instinct  prompted  the  means  of  accom¬ 
plishing  this,  though  in  this  case  it  happened  to  be 
at  fault.  This  you  will  notice  is  quite  different  from 
the  form  of  instinct  which  our  definitions  generally 
recognize.  According  to  them,  an  instinctive  act  is 
one  done  blindly  without  any  foresight  of  the  result. 
In  this  case  the  act  is  performed  with  a  definite 
knowledge  of  the  result  to  be  accomplished,  but  with 
no  knowledge  of  the  manner  in  which  the  means  in- 


INSTINCT  AND  REASON 


167 


stinctively  used  would  produce  that  which  is  desired. 
Something  similar  we  may  find,  if  I  may  be  allowed 
to  use  so  humble  an  illustration,  in  the  instinct  to 
scratch  where  there  is  an  itching  of  the  body.  This 
instinct  is  so  powerful  that  it  often  prevails  against 
reason.  The  person  knows  that  the  act  will  only 
aggravate  the  discomfort.  It  may  be  a  case  of  small¬ 
pox,  where  the  sufferer  knows  that  yielding  to  the 
impulse  will  not  only  increase  the  torment,  but  will 
leave  its  marks  for  the  remainder  of  his  life  ;  yet  so 
ungovernable  is  often  the  instinct  that  only  the  bind¬ 
ing  of  the  hands  will  prevent  the  act.  Here  is  an 
instinctive  act  directed  towards  a  clearly  recognized 
result ;  namely,  the  relieving  of  the  discomfort.  The 
instinct  persists  in  the  face  of  the  knowledge  that 
it  is  misdirected.  We  cannot  say  that  the  impulse 
results  from  the  memory  of  the  relief  which  it  has 
sometimes  brought.  It  is  doubtful  if,  in  a  great 
number  of  cases,  in  any  individual  human  life,  it  has 
brought  very  great  relief.  Even  if  there  were  this 
memory  of  past  experience,  the  knowledge  thus  at¬ 
tained  would  be  completely  overborne  by  the  certainty 
of  the  unhappy  results  in  the  case  under  considera¬ 
tion.  Here  we  have  instinct  working  towards  a  defi¬ 
nite  end  in  spite  of  the  knowledge  that  it  will  produce 
only  evil. 

I  have  thus  distinguished  between  two  forms  of 
instinct.  The  one  form  is  the  response  to  some  part 
of  the  environment,  which  response  is  the  necessary 
step  to  the  accomplishment  of  some  end  of  which  the 
animal  knows  nothing.  The  other  is  the  seeking  for 
some  distinctly  seen  end,  by  methods  that  aim  at  the 
accomplishing  of  this  end.  The  methods  are  con¬ 
sciously  used.  The  instinct  is  shown  in  the  desire  to 


ESSAYS 


1 68 

accomplish  these  ends.  The  one  form  is  illustrated 
by  the  act  of  an  animal  in  tearing  to  pieces  and  de¬ 
vouring  its  prey  when  it  is  before  it,  not  knowing  that 
this  is  the  method  by  which  its  life  is  prolonged.  The 
other  is  the  patient  seeking  his  prey,  when  he  has  no 
object  before  him  to  stimulate  the  act. 

I  am  inclined  to  think  that  this  instinctive  method 
of  reaching  recognized  ends  is  not  uncommon,  though 
as  I  intimated  before  it  is  not  so  easy  to  be  certain 
that  this  is  the  case  where  the  instinct  hits  the  mark 
and  the  end  is  accomplished.  Every  animal  has  its 
method  of  attack  and  defense.  The  bull  puts  down 
his  head,  and  with  closed  eyes  rushes  upon  the  foe. 
The  lion  leaps  upon  his  prey.  The  hare  flees  for 
safety.  In  each  of  these  cases  the  creature  has  a 
more  or  less  vague  or  clear  idea  of  what  it  wants  to 
accomplish,  but  instinct  furnishes  the  means.  It 
may  be  urged,  indeed,  that  at  first  the  animal  may 
have  acted  blindly,  and  experience  may  have  shown 
the  natural  issue  of  the  act.  I  cannot  think,  however, 
that  the  bull,  for  instance,  even  at  the  first,  made  his 
mad  rush  without  a  feeling  of  anger  and  a  more  or  less 
clear  purpose  of  hostility.  Besides  other  instincts  of 
attack  or  defense,  man  possesses  the  instinct  to  think. 
As  naturally,  as  instinctively  as  the  lion  leaps,  and 
the  hare  flees,  man  in  an  emergency  thinks.  His 
thought  at  once  leads  him  out  of  the  realm  of  pure 
instinct,  but  it  has  its  root  in  that. 

Indeed,  it  may  be  said  that  every  response  to  the 
environment  is  directly  or  indirectly  the  manifesta¬ 
tion  of  an  instinct. 

From  what  has  been  said  it  will  be  seen  how  small 
a  portion  of  instincts  is  covered  by  the  definition  so 
often  given,  namely,  that  it  is  unconscious  teleology, 


INSTINCT  AND  REASON 


169 


the  acting  in  such  a  way  as  to  accomplish  results 
which  are  not  foreseen.  It  is  possible  that  this  form 
of  instinct  is  more  developed  among  animals  than  in 
man.  Besides  these  there  is  the  instinctive  selection 
of  ends  to  be  accomplished  and  the  instinctive  use  of 
means  to  accomplish  recognized  ends. 

We  are  now  somewhat  prepared  to  consider  the 
relation  between  instinct  and  reason.  The  original 
impulse  to  action  is  instinctive.  The  ultimate  end 
sought  by  the  action  is  furnished  by  instinct.  Thus 
the  beginning  and  the  ultimate  end  of  our  activity 
are  to  be  found  in  instinct.  Reason  occupies  the 
belt  by  which  the  two  are  divided,  or,  if  we  prefer 
the  expression,  are  united. 

I  here  use  the  word  reason  in  the  old-fashioned 
English  sense  to  signify  the  activity  of  conscious  in¬ 
telligence.  The  word  reason,  in  the  more  profound 
significance  that  we  have  borrowed  from  the  German, 
would  find  its  throne  in  the  realm  of  the  instincts. 

The  instinctive  impulses  to  activity  and  the  instinc¬ 
tive  ends  towards  which  the  activity  is  directed  are 
both  irrational.  By  this  I  mean  that  the  impulse  acts 
without  conscious  reason,  and  that  it  would  be  im¬ 
possible  to  give  a  reason  why  the  ultimate  ends 
should  be  sought.  The  word  irrational  would  seem, 
however,  to  degrade  these  instincts.  I  will  therefore 
call  the  primal  impulses  infrarational  and  the  ultimate 
ends  sought  suprarational. 

Perhaps  we  cannot  better  illustrate  the  relations  to 
reason  of  these  two  instinctive  extremes,  the  begin¬ 
ning  and  the  end  of  all  our  activity,  than  by  taking 
thought  as  an  example.  Thought,  as  we  have  seen, 
is  resorted  to  instinctively  by  man.  This,  as  a  mat¬ 
ter  of  course,  leads  at  once  into  what  I  have  called 


170 


ESSAYS 


the  belt  of  reason.  What  is  the  end  for  which  men 
think,  or  towards  which  they  think  ?  Some  think 
simply  in  order  to  reach  the  truth.  They  wish  sim¬ 
ply  to  know.  Why  do  men  desire  to  know  ?  What 
is  the  reason  for  seeking  the  truth  ?  The  truth- 
seeker  can  give  no  reason.  The  question  is  to  him 
absurd.  To  seek  truth  is  simply  the  most  natural  as 
well  as  the  most  desirable  thing  that  a  man  can  do. 
In  other  words,  the  impulse  to  truth-seeking  bears 
all  the  marks  of  that  which  is  simply  instinctive. 
Perhaps  comparatively  few  think  merely  that  they 
may  reach  the  truth.  Most  men,  it  is  probable,  think 
in  order  to  discover  how  best  to  remove  some  more 
or  less  serious  inconvenience,  or  how  to  succeed  in 
being  happier  or  more  useful.  Whatever  be  the 
purpose  of  their  thought,  the  final  end  of  their 
mental  activity  is  something  that  they  seek  without 
being  able  to  assign  a  reason  why  this  end  is  desir¬ 
able.  Here  again  the  desirability  appears  so  natural 
and  obvious  that  to  ask  for  a  reason  seems  an  imper¬ 
tinence.  Thus  men  seek  truth  or  seek  happiness 
just  as  the  hen  insists  on  brooding  over  her  eggs,  or 
as  the  bird  of  passage  wings  its  way  to  some  distant 
clime,  simply  because  it  feels  that  it  must. 

But  whatever  may  be  the  object  of  thought,  how 
can  we  tell  when  the  result  that  we  seek  is  reached  ? 
Take  the  time-honored  syllogism,  How  do  we  know 
that  if  John  is  man  and  man  is  mortal,  John  is  mor¬ 
tal  ?  Prove  me  that  if  you  please.  To  prove  it  is 
impossible.  A  chain  of  reasoning  must  come  to  an 
end  somewhere.  Like  any  other  chain  it  must  be 
attached  to  a  staple  if  it  is  to  hold  ;  and  the  staple 
which  supports  the  chain  of  reasoning  is  something 
that  needs  and  admits  of  no  proof.  It  is  something 


INSTINCT  AND  REASON  171 

that  furnishes  its  own  evidence.  In  other  words,  it  is 
accepted  instinctively. 

This  line  of  thought  could  be  carried  on  almost 
indefinitely.  I  have  spoken  of  the  ideal  of  truth. 
What  I  said  of  that  is  true  of  the  ideas  of  goodness 
and  beauty.  Who  can  say  why  it  is  right  to  do 
right  ?  There  are  enough,  indeed,  who  give  their 
answers,  such  as  they  are,  to  the  question.  Kant 
insists  that  no  answer  is  possible.  To  give  a  reason 
for  right-doing  is  to  exalt  something  above  righteous¬ 
ness.  The  Utilitarian  gives  his  answer  and  the 
Hedonist  gives  his.  But  whatever  the  answer,  the 
moral  law  affirms  itself.  It  is  independent  of  all 
theory.  As  the  earth  bore  Ptolemaic  and  Copernican 
alike  along  its  mighty  orbit,  heedless  of  their  theoriz¬ 
ing,  so  Hedonist  and  Utilitarian  and  Intuitionalist 
feel  alike  the  constraint  of  the  law  of  righteousness. 
Our  reasoning  did  not  create  these  great  ideals.  Our 
reasoning,  on  the  contrary,  depends  upon  them. 
These  fill  the  space  which  the  Germans  call  reason. 
This  is  that  which  underlies  all  reasoning.  Our  rea¬ 
son,  in  the  English  use  of  this  term,  is  the  torch- 
bearer.  These  ideals  rise  about  us  like  mighty  moun¬ 
tain  ranges.  We  wander  among  them.  The  reason 
throws  some  little  light  by  which  their  sublime  forms 
reveal  glimpses  of  their  vastness.  It  shows  us  the 
way  by  which  we  may  most  fully  attain  unto  them, 
but  it  finds  them  —  it  does  not  create  them.  Yet  our 
real  life  is  in  them.  It  is  by  these  that  we  stand  in 
any  real  relation  to  the  universe.  It  is  in  the  world 
of  the  suprarational,  that  is,  in  the  realm  of  the  in¬ 
stincts,  that  our  real  life  lies.  Our  reason,  as  we  have 
seen,  throws  light  upon  them.  It  thus  enables  us  to 
stand  in  such  a  relation  to  our  instincts  lower  and 


172 


ESSAYS 


higher  that  we  can  compare  them,  that  we  can  encour¬ 
age  one  and  repress  another.  Its  torch  is  thus  of 
great  service.  Only  we  must  remember  that  it  is 
some  profound  instinct  that  decides  what  is  lower 
and  what  is  higher,  and  thus  controls  our  choice. 
We  speak  often  of  living  by  reason.  In  fact,  we 
live  by  our  instincts.  Happy  is  he  in  whose  life 
the  lower  instincts  are  subordinated  to  the  higher. 
In  this  subordination,  as  we  have  seen,  the  reason 
may  furnish  great  help. 

From  what  has  been  said  it  must  not  be  under¬ 
stood  that  the  realm  of  the  instincts  is  the  same  as 
that  which  is  so  often  referred  to  as  the  unconscious. 
We  are  conscious  of  the  high  ideals  which  lure  on 
our  true  lives.  We  can  simply  not  get  behind  them 
or  under  them.  If  we  did  we  should  only  come  upon 
other  finalities.  We  are  conscious  of  them  as  we 
are  conscious  of  ourselves.  We  cannot  get  behind 
these  finalities  any  more  than  we  can  get  behind  our¬ 
selves. 

It  is  thus  obvious  that  from  the  very  nature  of 
things  men  must  have  far  more  instincts  than  any 
other  creature.  If  all  natural  impulses  and  all  final 
ends  of  activity  are  instinctive,  then  the  more  con¬ 
crete  organism  must  have  more  of  these  than  others, 
for  the  multiplication  of  these  impulses  and  ends  is 
what  gives  concreteness  ;  and  man  is  the  most  con¬ 
crete  of  all  the  dwellers  upon  the  earth. 

After  thus  considering,  so  far  as  is  necessary  for 
our  purpose,  the  part  that  instinct  plays  in  the  life 
of  man,  we  have  now,  by  a  sudden  change  of  our 
point  of  view,  to  consider  the  part  that  reason  plays 
in  the  life  of  the  lower  animal.  We  find  at  once 
certain  great  differences,  though  these  may  not  be 


INSTINCT  AND  REASON 


173 


so  radical  as  some  suppose.  The  most  prominent 
of  these  differences  is  found  in  the  fact  that  in  the 
animal  the  belt  of  reason  is  much  narrower  and  that 
the  infrarational  impulses  appear  to  be  much  more 
numerous  than  the  suprarational  ends.  So  far  as 
the  quality  of  the  rational  activity  is  concerned,  the 
principle  commonly  laid  down  is  that  the  animal  can¬ 
not  think  by  general  concepts.  This  is  the  view 
taken  by  Locke,  Schopenhauer,  and  others.  This 
position  seems  to  me  reasonable  if  not  taken  too  lit¬ 
erally.  The  fact  that  language  is  so  slightly  devel¬ 
oped  among  the  animals  would  seem  to  indicate  that 
the  power  of  thinking  by  general  concepts,  if  it 
exist  at  all,  must  do  so  to  a  very  small  extent.  If 
any  one  is  jealous  for  the  reputation  of  the  brute  in 
this  matter,  his  suspicion  that  there  is  in  this  state¬ 
ment  some  unfairness  toward  the  lower  animal  may 
b£  allayed  by  the  suggestion  that  some  philosophies 
practically  leave  very  little  space  for  general  con¬ 
cepts  in  the  mind  of  man  himself ;  and  I  am  inclined 
to  think  that  a  large  part  of  man’s  mental  processes  is 
carried  on  without  them.  Hume,  for  instance,  recog¬ 
nized  no  connection  in  thought  and  no  basis  in  rea¬ 
soning  but  the  power  of  association.  In  the  present 
day  many  assume  that  men  think  merely  in  pictures 
or  by  similar  presentations,  and  have  no  recogni¬ 
tion  of  the  pure  concept  as  such.  Man’s  thought, 
according  to  them,  consists  of  a  series  of  more  or 
less  distinct  imaginations.  Thus  the  account  pre¬ 
sented  just  now  of  the  thought  of  the  lower  animals 
gives  them,  in  fact,  all  that  the  philosophers  just 
referred  to  claim  for  themselves.  Practically,  as  I 
have  just  intimated,  the  general  concept  plays  a  com¬ 
paratively  small  part,  so  far  as  amount  is  concerned, 


174 


ESSAYS 


in  our  ordinary  thinking.  Practically,  we  pass  at 
once  from  particular  to  particular.  If,  for  instance, 
a  man  sees  a  mad  bull  rushing  for  him,  he  does  not 
consciously  reason  about  the  matter.  He  simply 
runs.  Of  course  he  has  in  his  mind  the  general 
notion  expressed  by  the  word  bull,  but  this  prob¬ 
ably  is  simply  in  the  background  of  his  mind.  If  a 
laborer  in  the  field  hears  the  bell  ring  for  dinner,  the 
sound  probably  simply  suggests  to  him  the  idea  of 
dinner,  not  of  dinner  in  general,  perhaps  not  what  in 
our  modern  use  of  words  we  should  call  an  idea  at 
all.  It  is  difficult,  however,  to  reason  confidently 
about  these  mental  processes,  because  we  have  the 
general  concepts  in  the  form  of  words  and  cannot 
wholly  get  rid  of  them.  With  the  young  child  it  is 
different.  We  say  that  the  burnt  child  dreads  the 
fire.  The  young  child  has  no  conception  of  fire  as 
such.  The  one  fire  simply  by  its  resemblance  to  the 
other  fire  recalls  so  vividly  the  smart  of  the  burn 
that  the  child  shrinks  from  approaching  it.  Some 
persons  are  inclined  to  give  the  young  child  credit  for 
great  power  of  generalization.  It  is  possible  that  at 
first  what  is  called  generalization  is  simply  a  failure 
accurately  to  notice  differences.  If  in  a  farmer’s 
yard  you  were  introduced  to  a  sheep  named  “  Bo- 
peep,”  the  next  sheep  that  you  saw  in  the  yard  you 
would  probably  speak  of  as  “  Bo-peep.”  This  would 
not  be  because  you  had  great  power  of  generalization, 
but  because  of  a  lack  of  power  of  discrimination. 
However  this  may  be,  association  depending  upon 
resemblances  great  or  small  would  appear  to  be  the 
controlling  influence  in  the  mental  processes  and  the 
activities  of  the  child,  and  the  same  is  probably  true 
of  the  animal.  Once  when  I  was  sitting  in  a  buggy 


INSTINCT  AND  REASON 


175 


in  Washington  Street  in  Boston,  the  driver  of  one  of 
the  red  omnibuses  common  in  those  days  happened 
to  hit  my  horse  with  his  whip.  After  that  the  ani¬ 
mal  continued  to  stand  quietly  as  before,  except  that 
whenever  a  red  omnibus  passed  he  made  a  nervous 
start.  I  refer  to  this  as  a  simple  example  of  the 
kind  of  association  of  which  I  have  been  speaking. 
The  horse  probably  did  not  consciously  reach  the 
general  notion  of  an  omnibus,  that  is,  of  the  omnibus 
as  it  appeared  to  him  —  he  did  not  reason  that  those 
big  red  things  were  dangerous.  Rather  we  must  sup¬ 
pose  that  the  resemblance  of  the  other  omnibuses 
suggested  so  strongly  the  touch  of  the  whip  which 
he  had  received  from  the  first  that  he  shrank  from 
each. 

The  kind  of  identification  thus  described  did  not 
in  the  case  of  this  horse  result  from  failure  to  note 
differences.  Some  of  the  higher  animals,  notably 
the  horse,  have  a  power  of  acute  observation  which 
the  savage  alone  among  men  can  claim  at  all  to  equal, 
and  probably  in  this  regard  the  savage  is  very  far 
behind. 

I  once  had  an  opportunity  to  watch  a  dog  take  his 
observations.  He  did  it  apparently  with  a  full  sense 
of  what  he  was  doing.  I  was  driving,  in  a  sleigh 
through  a  city,  with  a  dog  that  had  never  been  in  the 
place  before.  He  stood  with  his  fore  feet  resting  on 
the  dasher,  turning  his  head  from  side  to  side  as 
rapidly  as  he  could.  When  we  were  coming  back  he 
lay  down  quietly  in  the  bottom  of  the  sleigh  ;  but 
the  moment  we  came  upon  a  street  where  we  had  not 
been  before,  his  fore  feet  were  on  the  dasher  again 
and  his  head  was  turning  from  side  to  side  as  rapidly 
as  at  first.  The  animal  does  not  ordinarily,  so  far  as 


176 


ESSAYS 


I  have  noticed,  learn  his  lesson  in  this  obviously  con¬ 
scious  manner.  In  general,  like  a  well-trained  lady, 
it  sees  everything  without  seeming  to  see  anything. 
It  is  amazing  how  much  the  higher  animal  is  able  to 
take  in,  in  this  quiet  and  apparently  purposeless  way. 
I  once  was  driving  through  a  street  in  Boston  where 
I  intended  to  make  a  call.  The  houses  were  so  much 
alike  that  I  ordinarily  had  to  observe  carefully  the 
numbers  on  the  doors.  This  time,  while  I  was  watch¬ 
ing  for  the  numbers  as  well  as  I  could,  the  horse 
suddenly  drew  up  to  the  side  of  the  street  and 
stopped.  I  looked  and  saw  that  it  was  the  house  I 
wanted.  The  horse  had  been  on  the  street  only 
once  before,  and  a  year  had  passed  since  then.  The 
same  horse  I  was  once  driving  through  a  wooded 
road  in  Maine,  looking  out  for  the  place  where,  the 
year  before,  we  had  gone  into  the  woods  to  get  ber¬ 
ries.  Here  again  the  horse  suddenly  stopped.  It 
was  some  minutes  before  we  realized  that  this  was 
the  place  we  were  seeking.  When  we  were  there 
before  we  had  noticed  a  pile  of  wood  at  the  spot,  and 
had  taken  that  as  the  mark  by  which  we  should  recog¬ 
nize  it.  This  year  the  wood  was  gone,  and  thus  we 
failed  to  know  the  place.  By  what  subtler  marks 
the  horse  distinguished  it,  I  do  not  know.  I  refer  to 
these  facts,  not  as  specially  remarkable,  but  as  show¬ 
ing  the  marvelous  observation  and  memory  of  the 
higher  animal,  which  the  horse  possesses  in  a  very 
marked  degree.  I  do  not  suppose  the  acts  of  the 
animal  were  performed  with  any  conscious  purpose 
or  act  of  reasoning.  I  suppose  they  were  the  result 
simply  of  association  and  of  habit  —  if  that  can  be 
called  habit  which  is  the  result  of  a  single  experience. 
The  horse  sometimes  shows  great  discrimination. 


INSTINCT  AND  REASON 


1 77 


The  first  time  I  drove  out  a  certain  horse,  we  happened 
to  call  at  two  greenhouses.  Naturally,  the  next  time 
as  we  passed  them  the  horse  proposed  to  stop.  What 
is  more  remarkable  is,  that  as  we  came  to  a  third 
greenhouse,  which  we  had  not  visited  the  day  before, 
the  horse  proposed  to  stop  at  that.  It  was  probably 
the  greenhouse  fragrance  that  suggested  it.  He 
seemed  to  have  made  up  his  mind,  brute  fashion, 
that  greenhouses  were  our  specialty.  That  drive 
convinced  him  that  we  were  not  people  that  did  the 
same  thing  every  day ;  and  he  never  troubled  us 
again,  so  far  as  I  now  remember,  by  stopping  where- 
ever  we  had  stopped  before. 

While  the  horse  is,  perhaps,  more  than  most  other 
animals,  a  creature  of  habit,  yet  I  suppose  the  same 
principle  of  association  lies  behind  a  great  many  acts 
of  seeming  intelligence  on  the  part  of  the  brute. 
Certainly,  however,  the  intelligence  of  the  animal 
seems  very  often  to  go  beyond  anything  that  could 
be  thus  explained.  The  animal  strikes  out  in  new 
ways,  doing  what  it  had  never  done  before,  and  what 
it  had  never  been  taught.  It  adapts  itself  to  circum¬ 
stances,  and  invents  new  ways  of  reaching  its  ends. 
This  I  conceive  that  it  does  by  no  act  of  conscious 
reasoning,  but  the  acts  and  their  results  suggest 
themselves  to  it.  Take  a  simple  case  as  it  was  told 
me  by  a  friend.  A  horse  ordinarily  puts  his  foot 
forward  when  he  wishes  to  reach  anything.  To  put 
the  foot  forward  to  draw  something  towards  him 
seems  a  natural  and  instinctive  act.  My  friend’s 
horse,  wishing  to  get  at  his  bedding  in  order  that  he 
might  improvidently  devour  it,  put  his  fore  foot  back 
and  drew  the  bedding  forward.  It  would  seem  as  if 
his  ancestors  in  their  free  state  could  rarely,  if  ever, 


i78 


ESSAYS 


have  had  occasion  to  use  the  fore  foot  in  this  way.  It 
was  thus  an  act  of  intelligent  adaptation  of  means  to 
ends.  A  still  more  complicated  process  of  the  kind 
was  carried  on  by  a  dog  of  mine  named  Tiny.  I  give 
the  name  because  I  shall  have  occasion  to  refer  to 
him  again.  He  was  a  black-and-tan,  by  no  means  a 
glutton,  but  something  of  an  epicure.  One  evening 
a  paper  was  laid  on  the  floor  ;  a  biscuit  was  broken 
up  for  his  supper,  and  the  pieces  laid  on  the  paper. 
The  supper  did  not  quite  suit  him.  He  carefully 
took  the  pieces  one  after  another  and  carried  them 
away  from  the  paper.  He  then  returned  and  sat 
on  the  paper,  waiting  till  something  more  attractive 
should  be  offered  him.  One  would  be  safe  in  saying 
that  neither  he  nor  any  ancestor  of  his  had  ever  done 
an  act  like  this.  It  was  an  original  act  of  intelligence 
performed  on  the  inspiration  of  the  moment. 

Still  greater  intelligence  was  shown  by  a  dog  that 
did  not  belong  to  me  but  was  owned  by  a  household 
that  I  knew  not  less  intimately  than  my  own.  The 
dog  I  knew  very  well.  The  grandmother  of  the 
house  was  taken  ill  one  evening.  There  were  only 
ladies  there,  and,  on  account  of  ill  health  or  some 
other  reason,  no  one  of  them  could  go  for  the  doctor, 
though  he  lived  not  far  away.  While  they  were 
wishing  most  earnestly  that  he  would  come,  to  their 
surprise  he  walked  in.  It  seems  that  the  dog,  who 
was  a  mongrel,  had  gone  to  his  door  and  barked 
till  he  was  admitted.  He  found  the  doctor  and  made 
such  unmistakable  signs  that  he  wished  to  be  followed 
that  the  doctor  did  follow  him  and  was  greeted  very 
gladly.  The  dog  was  not  in  the  habit  of  going  to 
the  physician’s  house.  How  he  knew  that  the  doctor 
was  wanted  could  only  be  conjectured.  Like  Mrs. 


INSTINCT  AND  REASON 


179 


Browning’s  Flash,  he  was  very  sympathetic  in  illness. 
Whether  on  this  occasion  he  had  heard  the  doctor’s 
name  spoken  in  a  way  which  showed  that  he  was 
wanted,  or  whether  he  remembered  that  in  such 
cases  the  doctor  had  generally  been  summoned,  one 
could  only  guess. 

The  same  dog,  named  Spot,  was  very  fond  of  two 
young  men,  neither  of  them  belonging  to  the  family 
with  which  he  lived.  The  young  men  left  town 
together,  and  not  till  the  end  of  two  years  did  one  of 
them  return.  Spot  received  him  with  great  delight, 
and  then  suddenly  disappeared.  After  some  time  he 
returned  evidently  tired  and  downhearted.  It  was 
later  known  that  after  greeting  the  returned  wanderer 
he  hurried  to  the  home  of  the  other  young  man,  some 
two  or  three  miles  away,  taking  it  for  granted  that, 
as  the  two  had  disappeared  together,  together  they 
had  returned.  A  simpler  illustration  of  like  intelli¬ 
gence  was  given  by  a  Boston  terrier  that  I  now  own. 
He  had  tried  to  persuade  me  to  go  to  walk  with  him  ; 
but  failing,  as  he  probably  fancied,  to  make  me  under¬ 
stand  what  he  wanted,  he  finally  brought  me  the 
leash  by  which  I  was  in  the  habit  of  leading  him. 

It  would  be  very  interesting,  if  it  were  possible,  to 
determine  the  indirect  effect  which  is  sometimes  pro¬ 
duced  in  the  animal,  as  in  the  dog,  for  instance,  by 
living  in  close  community  with  beings  so  far  above 
him  as  we  generally  conceive  ourselves  to  be.  I  do 
not  refer  to  any  result  of  training,  but  simply  to  what 
I  may  call  the  expansion  and  elevation  of  the  mind. 
It  is  difficult  to  do  this  because  we  are  so  little  famil¬ 
iar  with  the  animal  in  his  wild  state.  There  does 
seem  to  be,  however,  an  intensity  of  personal  affection 
that  must  have  come  in  the  manner  which  I  have 


i8o 


ESSAYS 


indicated.  At  least  the  regard  that  the  ancestor  of 
the  dog  has  for  his  pack  seems  to  have  concentrated 
itself  upon  one  or  more  individuals.  The  animal,  fur¬ 
ther,  is  so  dependent  upon  these,  so  obedient  to  them, 
and  so  cared  for  by  them,  that  the  relation  is  elevated, 
and  the  animal  seems  to  enter  more  or  less  into  sym¬ 
pathy  with  the  feelings  of  those  with  whom  he  lives. 
There  is  sometimes  developed  in  the  dog,  for  in¬ 
stance,  something  that  I  can  hardly  venture  to  call 
by  a  lower  name  than  a  sense  of  duty.  It  may  have 
been  developed  by  a  series  of  rewards  and  punish¬ 
ments,  though  this  is  by  no  means  always  the  case. 
Whatever  may  have  been  its  method  of  development, 
it  stands  independent  of  hope  or  fear.  It  is  this 
finer  sympathy,  as  well  as  a  larger  intelligence,  that 
is  noticeable  in  some  of  the  incidents  that  I  have 
related.  We  find  also  in  the  dog  a  self-control  which 
sometimes  goes  beyond  the  direct  result  of  training. 
One  of  the  most  marked  illustrations  of  the  kind  that 
I  remember  occurred  in  the  case  of  the  dog  Tiny, 
to  whom  I  have  already  referred.  I  should  premise 
that  he  never  had  a  canine  friend  during  his  life.  He 
was,  indeed,  at  swords’  points  with  his  race.  He 
would  allow  no  dog  on  the  premises,  and,  if  one  ven¬ 
tured  to  pass  the  time  of  day  with  him  on  the  street, 
Tiny  would  promptly  teach  him  to  go  about  his 
business.  One  evening  however,  a  Gordon  Setter 
pup  was  brought  to  the  house.  Tiny  at  once  recog¬ 
nized  it  as  adopted  by  the  family;  but,  though  he 
never  harmed  it  all  the  time  they  were  together,  he 
never  showed  it  any  friendliness.  In  fact,  he  pre¬ 
served  what  might  be  called  an  armed  neutrality. 
To  this  reserve  there  was  but  one  exception.  When 
the  new-comer  committed  any  act  for  the  like  of 


INSTINCT  AND  REASON 


181 


which  Tiny  had  been  punished  in  his  puppyhood, 
Tiny  would  fly  at  him  and  give  him  a  vigorous  box¬ 
ing.  He  thus  spontaneously  assumed  the  part  which 
trained  elephants  in  India  are  taught  to  perform,  to 
assist  in  the  education  of  his  kind.  In  Tiny’s  case  - — 
so  far  as  one  could  judge  from  the  manner  of  the  act  — 
there  entered  into  it  a  feeling  of  special  satisfaction. 
He  appeared  to  welcome  an  opportunity  of  display¬ 
ing  his  real  feeling.  Beppo,  as  this  new-comer  was 
named,  slept  in  the  cellar,  while  Tiny  had  his  bed 
upstairs.  One  evening,  as  I  was  coming  up  from  the 
cellar,  I  found  Tiny  waiting  for  me  with  an  expression 
that  seemed  to  me  at  the  time  to  have  something 
mysterious  about  it.  He  led  me  to  his  bed,  and  in 
it  was  Beppo,  who  had  not  only  invaded  the  sacred 
place,  but  had  unearthed,  or  rather  unbedded,  Tiny’s 
favorite  bones,  which  he  had  hidden  under  his  rug, 
and  was  actually  gnawing  them.  It  must  be  remem¬ 
bered  that  Tiny  had  never  been  trained  to  abstain 
from  ill-treating  Beppo.  There  had  never  been 
occasion  for  this.  He  had  simply  felt  the  proprieties 
of  the  case  and  recognized  his  duty  and  accepted  it. 
Knowing  the  dog  as  I  did,  the  self-restraint  that  he 
exercised  under  these  most  trying  circumstances  was 
something  marvelous.  Indeed,  his  whole  relation  to 
Beppo  was  extremely  interesting.  When  the  latter, 
who  was  something  of  a  rover,  was  tied  in  the  gar¬ 
den,  Tiny  would  often  sit  on  the  steps  and  watch 
him  with  apparent  complacency.  He  would  pay  not 
the  slightest  attention  to  any  of  Beppo’s  expressions 
of  desire  that  he  would  come  and  lighten  his  confine¬ 
ment  by  a  little  play.  Every  now  and  then,  however, 
he  would  start  and  career  madly  around  the  garden  in 
a  way  not  usual  with  him.  I  cannot  say  what  was  his 


182 


ESSAYS 


real  motive,  but  the  appearance  was  as  if  he  wished 
to  exhibit  to  Beppo  his  own  freedom. 

In  all  these  cases  we  see  something  quite  different 
from  instinct.  They  show  real  intelligence.  At  the 
same  time  there  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  the  acts 
were  prompted  by  a  conscious  process  of  reasoning, 
though  perhaps  we  have  no  right  to  deny  this.  It 
seems  most  probable  that  the  animal  was  moved  by 
an  impulse  towards  a  certain  result,  and,  to  accom¬ 
plish  this,  took  the  steps  that  the  impulse  suggested. 
I  will  illustrate  my  meaning  by  reference  to  a  theory 
of  the  will  maintained  by  Professor  James.  This  is 
to  the  effect  that  we  exercise  the  direct  power  of  will 
only  over  our  ideas,  but  that  the  idea  of  an  act  firmly 
held  sets  the  act  in  motion,  by  a  certain  reflex  power 
In  order  that  this  result  should  be  accomplished  the 
idea  must  be  very  prominent.  If  the  idea  of  a  mur¬ 
der  drove  every  other  idea  from  a  man’s  mind,  the 
murder  would  be  accomplished.  Something  like 
this  may  possibly  be  the  process  in  the  life  of  the 
brute,  when  by  means  not  before  tried  it  seeks  to 
attain  some  greatly  desired  result.  The  longing  to 
have  his  bedding  within  reach  so  that  it  could  be 
eaten  might,  according  to  this  view,  of  itself  move 
the  limb  of  the  horse  in  an  unwonted  way.  The 
longing  to  see  something  on  the  paper  instead  of  the 
undesired  biscuit  might  itself  impel  the  dog  to  re¬ 
move  it. 

If  such  suggestions  as  these  may  seem  to  any  to 
set  animal  intelligence  too  low  in  the  scale,  I  will  put 
what  is  substantially  the  same  thought  in  a  form 
more  flattering.  The  mental  activity  of  the  animal, 
according  to  the  view  that  has  been  presented,  may 
appear  to  foreshadow  in  its  small  way  the  method  of 


INSTINCT  AND  REASON 


183 


the  highest  genius.  A  physician  who  is  really  an 
expert  does  not,  I  suppose,  always  reason  out  a  case, 
does  not  consider  this  or  that  possible  disease,  or 
this  and  that  proper  remedy.  The  condition  of  the 
patient  at  once  suggests  the  nature  of  the  disease 
and  the  appropriate  remedy.  In  regard  to  a  similar 
case  the  tyro  would  compare  symptoms,  and  cudgel 
his  memory  in  order  to  recall  and  to  consider  medi¬ 
cines  that  might  be  appropriate.  So  in  literature 
the  genius,  by  a  certain  divination,  sees  what  is  to 
be  accomplished  and  how  it  is  to  be  accomplished. 
In  the  case  of  the  animal  and  of  the  genius  alike,  I 
conceive  that  impulses  such  as  we  are  considering 
resemble  instinct  in  the  directness  and  spontaneity  of 
their  activity  ;  though  they  are  not,  in  fact,  instinc¬ 
tive,  because  they  meet  perfectly  new  relations  by 
ways  that  never  have  been  tried  before. 

It  is  interesting  thus  to  see  how  extremes  meet ; 
how  the  beginning  foreshadows  the  end.  What  a  long 
stretch  of  experience,  what  struggles,  what  intel¬ 
lectual  strain,  lie  between  the  instinct  and  the  insight 
of  the  animal,  and  the  insight,  let  us  say,  of  the 
architect  who  builded  better  than  he  knew ;  and  yet 
these  animal  endowments  suggest  the  highest  form 
into  which  genius  can  gather  up  its  powers  and  its 
acquirements  ;  just  as  the  self-forgetting,  self-sacri¬ 
ficing,  unquestioning  and  unhesitating  love  of  the 
lion  mother  for  her  whelps  suggests  the  ideal  of  the 
natural,  unquestioning  devotion  of  the  patriot  to  his 
country,  and  of  the  philanthropist  to  his  kind.  The 
truly  virtuous  man  is  one  in  whom  virtue  has  become 
a  kind  of  instinct,  or  as  Aristotle  put  it,  a  habit. 
Indeed,  as  we  have  seen,  the  sense  of  duty  and  the 
recognition  of  the  other  high  ideals  of  life  are  funda- 


1 84 


ESSAYS 


mentally  instinctive.  They  are  instincts  so  overlaid 
and  entangled  with  other  and  lower  instincts  that 
they  do  not  often  stand  out  in  their  full  power. 

It  may  seem  as  if  under  the  name  instinct  had,  in 
this  paper,  been  brought  together  elements  too  hetero¬ 
geneous  to  be  called  by  a  common  name.  It  is  to 
be  noted,  however,  that  the  higher  instincts  to  which  I 
have  referred  stand  in  a  relation  to  the  organism  that 
possesses  them  similar  to  that  in  which  the  lower  in¬ 
stincts  stand  to  the  organisms  with  which  they  are 
united.  In  both  cases  they  represent  the  impulses 
and  the  ends  by  and  for  which  the  activity  of  life  is 
manifested.  To  hunger  and  thirst  after  righteousness 
is  the  impulse  and  the  end  characteristic  of  the  higher 
spiritual  life,  just  as  to  hunger  and  thirst  for  flesh  and 
blood  is  the  characteristic  of  the  tiger.  It  is  the  life 
that  has  changed,  not  the  nature  of  the  instinct.  As 
the  life  becomes  higher  and  nobler,  the  instincts  are 
higher  and  nobler.  Indeed,  the  elevation  of  the  life 
and  the  elevation  of  the  instincts  are  one  and  the 
same  thing. 

When  I  accepted,  more  or  less  literally,  the  posi¬ 
tion  of  Locke,  Schopenhauer,  and  others  —  that  the 
difference  between  the  thought  of  man  and  that  of 
the  lower  animal  is  that  man  can  think  by  means  of 
general  ideas,  while  in  the  lower  animal,  if  general 
ideas  exist  at  all,  it  is  in  an  extremely  rudimentary 
state  —  it  may  have  appeared  to  some  that  the  differ¬ 
ence  between  the  mental  equipments  of  man  and  the 
brute  was  reduced  to  a  minimum.  It  is  well  to 
notice,  in  conclusion,  though  in  a  most  general  way, 
the  significance  of  this  distinction.  By  the  use  of 
general  ideas  and  of  language,  which  alone  makes 
their  larger  development  possible,  man  enters  upon  a 


INSTINCT  AND  REASON 


185 


career  of  indefinite  progress.  By  these  he  stores  up 
his  own  past  experience  and  much  of  the  past  expe¬ 
rience  of  the  race.  Thus  an  indefinite  number  of  ex¬ 
periences  may  be  united  into  one.  By  this  power  not 
only  are  philosophy  and  religion  possible,  but  also  the 
enlargement  of  the  material  life.  By  this  power  man 
invents  complicated  machinery  by  which  he  is  able 
to  master  the  world.  By  this  come  plans  and  ideals  ; 
by  this  comes  the  thought  of  sin  and  of  holiness  ; 
by  this  even  the  comic  finds  free  recognition.  Indeed, 
at  that  point  of  the  development  of  life  in  the  world 
at  which  there  is  a  beginning,  in  any  real  sense,  of 
thinking  by  general  ideas,  man  begins.  He  begins, 
furnished  with  an  instrumentality  in  which  are  bound 
up  all  the  higher  possibilities  of  his  nature.  By  the 
help  of  this  he  enters  upon  a  career  of  advancement 
to  which  is  attached  no  limit.  No  such  change  of 
form  is  necessary  as  has  marked  the  successive  stages 
reached  by  the  lower  life  of  the  animal,  for  to  him 
as  man  the  possibility  of  measureless  achievement  is 
thrown  open. 


VIII 


THE  DEVIL 

Almost  all  peoples  have  recognized  malignant  or 
at  least  harmful  spirits.  Among  many  savages,  in¬ 
deed,  the  only  spiritual  beings  believed  in  are  of  this 
nature.  The  religious  rites  of  such  peoples  seem 
designed  as  a  defense  against  evil  rather  than  as  an 
attempt  to  win  what  is  good.  One  writer  has  sug¬ 
gested  that  the  fact  that  these  spirits  can  be  reached 
by  such  rites,  and  that  their  anger  or  ill  will  may  be 
thus  averted,  shows  that,  after  all,  there  is  in  them  a 
certain  element  of  goodness.  In  a  certain  sense,  it 
is  urged,  the  person  who  approaches  them  with  these 
rites  shows  thereby  that  he  has  confidence  in  them. 
This  reasoning  would  be  correct  if  it  were  believed 
that  these  spirits  could  be  moved  to  pity  by  the  tears 
or  supplications  of  their  worshipers.  This,  however, 
does  not  seem  to  be  the  feeling  with  which  they  are 
in  general  approached.  What  is  offered  is  of  the 
nature  of  a  bribe.  The  criminal  does  not  show  a 
recognition  of  goodness  in  the  judge,  when  he  seeks 
to  turn  aside  the  stroke  of  justice  by  some  gift 

These  early  rites  are  often  even  further  removed 
from  an  appeal  to  compassion.  They  are  usually  be¬ 
lieved  to  have  a  certain  magical  power.  It  is  sup¬ 
posed  that  if  they  be  properly  performed  the  spirits, 
or  the  divinity,  will  be  compelled  to  grant  the  desire 
of  the  worshiper.  Professor  Roth  derives  the  San- 


THE  DEVIL 


187 


skrit  word  for  prayer,  from  which  come  the  terms 
Brahman  and  Brahma,  from  a  root  meaning  to  con¬ 
strain.  Prayer,  he  says  in  effect,  had  not  the  nature 
of  a  petition  so  much  as  of  a  controlling  force  which, 
if  properly  applied,  the  gods  could  not  resist.  Other 
derivations  of  this  word  have  been  suggested,  but  the 
view  of  prayer  to  which  Professor  Roth  referred  is 
not  uncommon.  Those  who  have  become  familiar 
with  the  life  of  certain  modern  savages  have  recog¬ 
nized  a  similar  fact.  The  savage  seeks  to  control 
supernatural  beings  by  rites  akin  to  magic,  just  as 
by  magical  rites  he  seeks  to  affect  the  lives  of  men. 

The  element  of  religious  faith  which  some  have 
sought  to  save  by  exalting  as  much  as  possible  the 
worship  of  these  savage  peoples  is  found  rather  at 
the  opposite  pole  of  their  thought.  The  belief  is 
often  held  that  no  sickness  or  death  can  occur  except 
by  the  interference  of  some  supernatural  power.  All 
the  troubles  of  life  are  traced  to  a  similar  source. 
This  shows  a  real,  though  perhaps  unconscious,  faith 
in  the  goodness  and  trustworthiness  of  nature.  The 
world  is  in  itself  a  source  only  of  good.  If  the  super¬ 
natural  powers  would  only  hold  themselves  aloof  and 
not  interfere  with  the  natural  processes  of  the  world, 
there  would  be  no  sickness,  no  death,  and  no  sorrow. 
This  certainly  shows  a  faith  in  the  beneficence  of  na¬ 
ture,  in  which  may  be  found  the  germ  of  a  positive 
religion,  though  this  religion,  when  it  appears,  may 
adopt  the  form  of  supernaturalism. 

If  we  rise  above  the  level  of  the  lowest  savage 
tribes,  and  reach  a  form  of  life  in  which  at  least  a 
few,  perhaps  many,  supernatural  beings  are  regarded 
as  well  disposed  towards  man,  the  malevolent  or 
harmful  spirits  still  exist  by  their  side.  The  Vedic 


ESSAYS 


1 88 

divinities  were  on  the  whole  very  friendly  towards 
men.  The  Vedic  hymns  show  that  the  worshipers 
had  towards  them  a  feeling  of  trust  which  sometimes 
allowed  the  use  of  the  most  familiar  forms  of  expres¬ 
sion.  These  hymns  show,  at  the  same  time,  that 
there  yet  existed  for  the  worshipers  a  substratum  of 
demoniacal  activity.  We  find  witches  and  incanta¬ 
tions,  and  to  the  imagination  of  at  least  some  of  the 
Vedic  singers  the  air  was  filled  with  demons.  I  will 
quote  an  illustration  of  this  belief  from  one  of  the 
hymns.  It  should  be  premised  that  Indu  represents 
the  fermented  juice  of  the  Soma,  which  was  the 
favorite  offering  to  the  gods,  by  which  they  were 
not  only  induced  to  serve  the  worshiper,  but  were 
strengthened  to  perform  mighty  works  in  his  behalf. 
Indra  is  the  god  of  the  thunderbolt,  who  procured 
rain  from  the  serpent  demon  that  held  it  in  the 
clouds ;  and  Agni  is  the  fire  god,  who  is  here  mani¬ 
fested  in  the  lightning.  The  passage  referred  to  is 
as  follows  :  — 

“Joined  with  thee,  O  Indu,  Indra  with  might 
swiftly  pressed  downwards  the  wheel  of  the  sun, 
which  was  rolling  far  away  upon  the  lofty  peak,  and 
he  destroyed  the  life-force  of  the  mighty  witch. 

“  Indra  smote,  and  Agni  burned  down,  O  Indu, 
before  the  hour  of  noon,  the  spirits  who  magically 
wander  in  house  and  wilderness  ;  many  thousands  of 
them  smote  he  with  his  dart. 

“  Thou,  Indra,  madest  lower  than  all  else  the 
wicked,  the  accursed  demon  stock ;  ye  both  thrust 
down,  ye  both  smote  the  foes  ;  vengeance  ye  wreaked 
through  strokes  of  death.”  1 

A  differentiation,  similar  to  that  which  is  mani- 

1  Rig  Veda,  iv.  28 ;  Grassmann’s  German  translation. 


THE  DEVIL 


189 


fested  in  the  Vedic  hymns,  between  the  spiritual 
beings  that  were,  on  the  whole,  friendly  to  their  wor¬ 
shipers,  and  those  that  were  hostile  to  them,  may  be 
traced  in  nearly  all  the  historical  religions.  The  line, 
however,  is  not  one  sharply  defined,  for  there  were 
recognized  spirits  that  it  would  be  difficult  to  classify. 
Thus  in  the  Vedic  hymns  we  find  worship  addressed 
to  the  god  Rudra,  a  being  so  terrible  that  some  have 
thought  he  must  have  been  adopted  from  the  native 
tribes  that  the  Aryan  stock  had  conquered  in  their 
descent  into  India.  The  same  divinity  appears  in 
later  times  as  Siva,  the  third  person  in  the  Hindu 
Trinity.  Though  he  is  called  Siva,  the  mild,  yet  he 
represents  the  terrible  forces  of  destruction.  The 
most  tender  expressions  were  addressed  to  Rudra, 
but  the  worshipers  evidently  approached  him  more 
in  fear  than  in  love. 

It  would  be  interesting  to  bring  together  the  nega¬ 
tive  deities  —  the  supernatural  beings  that  were  re¬ 
garded  as  hostile  to  man  —  in  order  to  compare  them 
with  one  another,  and  seek  their  origin.  Even  the 
fair  mythology  of  Greece  had  a  place  for  these  dark 
forces.  When,  in  the  second  part  of  Goethe’s  poem, 
Faust  insisted  upon  a  pilgrimage  to  Greece,  Mephis- 
topheles  went  with  him  most  unwillingly.  He  doubt¬ 
less  fancied  that  amid  the  beauty  and  the  grace  of 
the  classic  Pantheon  he  should  feel  very  little  at 
home.  He  was,  however,  most  agreeably  disap¬ 
pointed.  He  found  companionship  that  was  very 
much  to  his  liking.  The  Lamiae  tormented  him,  it 
is  true,  changing  their  form  beneath  his  very  hands  ; 
but  they  attracted  him,  and  he  seems  on  the  whole 
to  have  enjoyed  his  game  of  romps  with  them. 

Perhaps  the  Norse  religion  offers  this  realm  of  the 


ESSAYS 


190 

negative  supernatural  under  its  most  awful  form. 
The  Midgard  serpent,  the  wolf  Fenrir,  and  all  the 
elements  that  were  to  be  united  in  the  terrible  catas¬ 
trophe  in  which  the  gods  should  be  overthrown,  im¬ 
press  the  imagination  most  strongly.  Here,  too,  we 
find  those  intermediate  beings  that  it  is  not  easy  to 
classify  as  either  good  or  evil.  Such  were  the  giants, 
who  were  not  necessarily  bad  because  they  were  an¬ 
tagonistic  to  the  gods.  Most  problematical  of  all 
was  Loki,  who  belonged  half  to  the  race  of  the  gods 
and  half  to  that  of  the  giants.  So  fitful  and  capri¬ 
cious  was  he  that  we  might  fancy  the  two  elements 
which  were  embodied  in  his  nature  to  be  at  war 
within  it.  The  later  legend  dealt  hardly  with  him, 
and  he  seems  to  have  grown  more  malicious  with  his 
years.  At  first  he  was  a  god  in  good  and  regular 
standing.  He  was  one  of  the  creators  of  man,  fur¬ 
nishing  the  blood  and  the  glow  of  his  complexion. 
He  accompanied  Odin  as  his  fellow-traveler  through 
the  earth.  Even  after  he  had  brought  about  the 
death  of  Baldur,  he  claimed  his  seat  at  the  table  of 
the  gods,  and  his  claim  was  at  last  allowed.  Angry 
at  his  lack  of  welcome,  he  began  to  revile  the  gods. 
He  would  attack  one,  and  when  another  turned  to 
the  defense  he  would  direct  his  venomed  shafts 
against  the  new-comer,  beginning  with  “  Shut  up 
now,”  and  going  on  to  tell  some  scandalous  story 
which  concerned  his  opponent.  Unhappily  what  he 
said  seems  to  have  been  entirely  true.  The  gods 
turned  against  him,  pursued  him,  caught  him,  and 
put  upon  him  chains  which  bound  him  till  the  end  of 
the  world,  when  they  would  be  shaken  loose  by  the 
earthquakes,  and  after  the  terrible  Fimbul  winter 
he  should  steer  one  of  the  ships  that  were  to  bring 


THE  DEVIL 


191 

destruction  to  heaven  and  earth.  It  must  be  remem¬ 
bered  that  it  was  partly  for  speaking  the  truth  that 
Loki  was  pursued  and  bound  by  the  gods.  He  did 
not  speak  the  truth  in  love,  it  is  true,  but  it  was  the 
truth  after  all.  Loki  was  more  terrible  in  his  chil¬ 
dren  than  in  himself.  The  wolf  Fenrir,  the  Midgard 
serpent,  and  Hel  were  his  offspring.  It  is  possible 
that  two  beings  became  mingled  in  the  legend.  If 
this  is  so,  all  the  more  may  he  stand  as  the  repre¬ 
sentative  of  the  intermediate  characters  of  which  I 
have  taken  him  as  an  illustration. 

It  is  not  necessary,  however,  to  go  through  the 
dark  catalogue  of  beings  whose  nature  may  be  con¬ 
sidered  more  or  less  devilish.  We  find  them  in 
almost  every  nation  at  almost  every  time.  Perhaps 
the  ancient  Chinese,  during  the  period  covered  by  the 
“  Kings,”  were  as  free  from  them  as  any  other  people 
has  ever  been.  With  them  the  spirits  representing 
the  various  aspects  of  the  natural  world  filled,  under 
certain  circumstances,  the  place  occupied  among 
other  peoples  by  more  thoroughly  malevolent  beings. 
When  the  Emperor  ruled  justly  and  kept  his  human 
subjects  in  order,  these  spirits  of  nature  were  also 
under  restraint;  but  when  vice  and  injustice  pre¬ 
vailed  among  men,  these  spirits  became  turbulent 
and  wrought  harm.  The  Emperor  had  thus  to  keep 
both  worlds  in  subjection  —  that  of  men  and  that  of 
nature. 

When  we  seek  the  sources  of  the  belief  in  malevo¬ 
lent  supernatural  beings,  we  find  them  to  be  exceed¬ 
ingly  various.  The  idea  of  death  has  been  fertile  in 
such  conceptions.  The  dread  and  shrinking  which 
are  so  naturally  associated  with  death  were  projected 
into  that  realm  to  which  death  was  the  entrance. 


192 


ESSAYS 


Among  the  lower  peoples  the  spirits  of  the  dead  were 
regarded  as  objects  of  terror.  As  there  is  a  natural 
shrinking  from  a  dead  bocly,  so  there  is  a  shrinking 
from  the  other  element  of  the  living  man  when  it  is 
divorced  from  its  fellow.  Thus  we  find  measures 
taken  to  prevent  the  spirits  of  the  dead  from  find¬ 
ing  their  way  back  to  the  homes  that  they  had  left. 
They  were  sometimes  besought  not  to  come  back. 
The  offerings  that  were  made  to  them  were  doubtless 
in  part  the  expression  of  a  tenderness  which  death 
could  not  wholly  extinguish  ;  in  part  they  were  de¬ 
signed  to  secure  the  good  offices  of  the  departed  ; 
but  to  a  very  large  degree,  especially  among  the 
lower  peoples,  they  were  designed  to  prevent  disturb¬ 
ance  of  the  life  of  those  who  offered  the  gifts  by  the 
spirits  of  those  who  were  a  little  while  before  num¬ 
bered  among  their  dearest  friends.  It  is  a  sudden 
and  inexplicable  change  that  takes  place  in  the  feel¬ 
ing  of  the  living  towards  the  dead.  So  soon  as  the 
spirit  and  the  body  are  separated,  these  isolated  parts 
of  the  once  loved  and  cherished  whole  become  objects 
of  horror.  The  body  from  which  the  spirit  has  fled, 
the  spirit  which  has  left  the  body  and  which  may 
reappear  as  a  ghost,  have  been,  and  to  a  large  extent 
still  are,  alike  objects  of  dread. 

Besides  the  spirits  of  the  dead  which  have  often 
been  supposed  to  exert  a  baleful  influence,  other 
forms  of  evil-disposed  beings  are  created  by  the  name¬ 
less  dread  that  is  associated  with  death.  As  children 
through  fear  of  the  darkness  create  forms  which 
threaten  evil,  so  the  sense  of  the  uncanny  that  is 
connected  with  death  takes  shape  in  beings  which 
raise  to  a  more  intense  terror  the  fear  that  created 
them. 


THE  DEVIL 


:93 


Other  evil-disposed  spirits  are  those  which  are 
created  by  certain  natural  phenomena.  If  all  the 
changes  in  the  world  are  believed  to  be  the  product 
of  supernatural  beings,  then  the  beings  which  pro¬ 
duce  the  effects  that  are  the  most  dreaded  must  be 
supposed  to  be  in  themselves  malevolent.  Thus 
from  the  diseases  and  the  external  forces  that  work 
harm  arise  a  multitude  of  diabolical  spirits.  The 
sun  is  the  great  bringer  of  blessing.  When  his  light 
is  hidden  by  what  we  call  an  eclipse,  how  can  the 
ignorant  savage  help  believing  that  this  disappear¬ 
ance  of  the  sun  is  the  work  of  a  demon,  against 
whom  he  must  use  the  weapons  that  promise  to  be 
most  efficient,  even  though  these  be  nothing  more 
powerful  than  hideous  noises  that  shall  scare  the 
demon  from  his  prey  ? 

The  deities  connected  with  the  religions  of  hostile 
peoples,  or  with  religions  that  have  been  outgrown, 
have  often  been  regarded  as  devils.  Thus  the  early 
Christians  looked  upon  the  gods  of  Greece  and  Rome 
as  demons.  So  the  deities  of  the  Teutonic  religion 
became  demons  to  the  descendants  of  those  who  had 
once  worshiped  them. 

While  the  existence  of  the  diabolical  host  may  thus 
be  explained  in  part  by  the  dread  of  death  and  by 
certain  processes  of  nature  or  history,  we  must  also 
recognize  the  working  of  an  imagination  that  has 

been  simply  stimulated  by  these.  Give  this  imagina- 

• 

tion  a  field  and  stimulate  it  to  activity,  and  we  need 
not  be  surprised  to  find  that  its  creations  can  be 
measured  by  no  principles  or  laws.  It  may  be  diffi¬ 
cult  in  many  cases  securely  to  discriminate  between 
demons  that  are  the  product  of  an  unbridled  imagina¬ 
tion,  and  those  that  spring  from  some  special  sugges 


194 


ESSAYS 


tion  of  the  kinds  that  have  been  referred  to.  This 
is  difficult  because  we  often  know  too  little  of  the 
mental  processes  that  gave  rise  to  such  spectres  ; 
and  perhaps  if  we  could  trace  them  back  to  their 
source,  we  should  find  it  to  have  been  some  outward 
suggestion.  Yet  from  the  very  nature  of  the  imagi¬ 
nation  we  should  expect  that,  once  excited,  it  would 
work  to  a  certain  extent  without  rule.  Thus  we  can 
hardly  avoid  assuming  that  the  thousands  of  demons 
which  we  have  seen  recognized  by  the  Vedic  hymns 
were  to  a  large  extent  the  product  of  an  imagination 
stimulated,  doubtless,  but  not  controlled,  by  definite 
outward  phenomena;  though  had  the  Vedic  singer 
known  as  much  as  we  do  of  the  germs  of  disease  that 
fill  the  atmosphere,  he  could  hardly  have  furnished 
them  with  more  fitting  embodiment.  Given  the 
notion  of  a  hell,  for  example,  and  the  imagination 
will  take  a  strange  pleasure  in  peopling  it  with  shapes 
of  its  own  free  creation. 

I  have  not  spoken  of  the  sense  of  sin  as  one  of  the 
sources  from  which  the  notion  of  the  devil  has  been 
drawn.  The  sense  of  sin  has  often  given  to  the 
devil  his  most  terrible  aspect ;  but  the  world  of 
demons  would  seem  to  have  been  formed  before  this 
sense  had  differentiated  itself  from  that  of  ceremonial 
impurity  or  ritualistic  error  or  neglect. 

We  have  thus  glanced  at  various  forms  and  de¬ 
grees  of  beings  that  may  be  considered  to  possess  a 
nature  more  or  less  diabolical.  When  we  look  back 
upon  them,  however,  we  find  that  if  they  can  indeed 
be  considered  as  belonging  in  the  ranks  of  the  devil¬ 
ish  host,  they  are  all  demons  of  a  comparatively  low 
order.  This  expression,  like  any  other  that  can  be 
used  in  the  connection,  is  somewhat  ambiguous.  In 


THE  DEVIL 


1 95 


speaking  of  the  class  of  beings  under  consideration, 
all  our  terms  and  thoughts  must  be  inverted.  We 
are  like  Alice  behind  the  looking-glass,  where  every¬ 
thing  goes  by  contraries.  The  worse  the  personality 
may  be,  the  better  is  the  demon  as  such.  The  lower 
any  one  of  this  host  may  stand  judged  from  an  ethi¬ 
cal  point  of  view,  the  higher  does  he  stand  viewed 
from  the  diabolical  point  of  view.  The  more  improper 
he  may  be,  the  more  does  he  fulfill  the  ideal  of  what 
we  may  call  the  devil  proper.  In  other  words,  the 
kind  of  personages  we  have  thus  far  considered  are 
very  imperfect  specimens  of  diabolical  beings.  They 
have  been  believed  to  work  harm  to  men,  but  from 
this  it  does  not  follow  that  they  were  even  malignant. 
The  New  Zealander  believed  that  his  chief  divinity 
was  a  cannibal.  This  sounds  badly ;  but  when  we 
look  more  closely  we  see  that  it  affirms  nothing  very 
bad  of  the  divinity.  Cannibalism  in  a  god  is  not  like 
cannibalism  in  a  man.  If  the  divinities  devoured  one 
another,  the  case  would  be  different  ;  but  for  a  divin¬ 
ity  to  feed  upon  a  man  implies  no  greater  depravity 
than  for  a  man  to  eat  mutton.  From  the  human 
point  of  view  the  things  look  very  different ;  but  how 
would  it  look  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  sheep  ? 
To  the  fly  the  faithful  housemaid  might  well  appear 
to  be  a  sort  of  devil.  To  the  ox  the  butcher,  and  to 
the  fox  the  hunter,  might  naturally  appear  to  belong 
to  the  race  of  demons.  Yet  the  servant  may  be 
a  “perfect  treasure”  to  her  mistress;  the  butcher 
may  be  a  respectable  member  of  society  ;  and  the 
fox-hunter  may  be  a  parson.  We  see,  then,  that 
while  the  acts  of  the  supernatural  beings  may  be 
troublesome  to  ourselves  we  cannot  pronounce  upon 
the  nature  of  these  beings  until  we  know  something 


196 


ESSAYS 


of  the  motives  that  prompt  to  these  acts.  Wherever 
man  stands  in  a  negative  relation  to  the  supernatural 
powers,  they  are  regarded  by  him  as  more  or  less 
diabolical  in  their  nature,  although  he  may  veil  this 
feeling  under  a  decorous  phraseology.  This  may  be 
illustrated  by  the  fact  already  noticed  that  the  gods 
of  one  religion  are  sometimes  regarded  as  devils  from 
the  point  of  view  of  another  religion.  This  shows 
that  it  is  the  relation  of  men  to  these  beings,  and  not 
the  nature  of  the  beings  themselves,  that  constitutes 
the  difference. 

The  devil  in  the  highest  sense  of  the  word,  that  is, 
the  lowest,  should  be  a  tempter  ;  and  none  of  the 
beings  at  whom  we  have  glanced  appear  as  tempters. 
They  may  have  brought  harm  to  the  bodies  of  men, 
but  they  carried  on  no  war  against  their  souls.  Even 
the  fact  that  a  supernatural  being  performs  the  part 
of  a  tempter  would  not,  however,  necessarily  show  a 
strictly  diabolical  character.  In  the  religion  of  India 
the  gods  appear  as  tempters.  The  sage,  through 
ascetic  practices  and  meditation,  was  able  to  reach  a 
salvation  more  to  be  desired  than  any  which  the  gods 
could  offer.  In  attaining  this  he  passed  beyond  the 
realm  of  these  divinities.  He  thus  brought  to  them 
no  more  offerings  and  no  more  adoration.  It  was 
for  the  interest  of  the  gods  to  prevent  this  consum¬ 
mation.  They  therefore  assailed  him  with  tempta¬ 
tions  that  might  divert  his  thoughts  and  break  down 
his  purpose.  The  tempter  that  sought  to  turn  aside 
Buddha,  just  as  he  was  reaching  the  point  from  which 
he  could  bring  salvation  to  men,  is  sometimes  spoken 
of  as  a  demon.  Really  he  was  a  god,  the  ruler  of 
one  of  the  heavens  of  desire. 

The  devil  in  the  full  meaning  of  the  word  must  be 


THE  DEVIL 


197 


malignant  as  well  as  harmful ;  must  tempt  to  sin  as 
well  as  produce  physical  harm  ;  must  do  wrong,  not 
by  the  way,  but  for  the  sake  of  wrong-doing ;  must 
love  evil  because  it  is  evil  and  must  hate  the  good 
because  it  is  good.  No  being  can  be  imagined  as 
thus  consciously  and  wholly  evil  who  does  not  stand 
in  the  presence  of  an  ideal  of  holiness  which  he  hates, 
and  against  which  he  makes  war.  In  other  words, 
in  order  that  there  may  be  a  devil  worthy  of  the  name 
there  must  be  a  sharp  differentiation  between  good 
and  evil.  There  must  be  a  divinity  who  is  not  merely 
more  or  less  kindly  disposed,  but  is  good  in  him¬ 
self,  and  would  have  men  good ;  who,  in  a  word,  is 
holy. 

Holiness  implies  the  possession  of  a  conscious 
ideal  of  goodness  and  the  love  of  it.  The  divinity 
representing  this  ideal  must  be  in  a  sense  supreme. 
The  devil  then,  as  such,  could  not  be  found  in  a 
polytheism  representing  the  various  forces  of  nature. 
He  must  be  in  the  presence  of  a  god  who  loves  good 
as  he  himself  loves  evil,  and  who  is  the  head  of  a 
good  creation.  It  is  obvious,  however,  that  if  there 
is  to  be  a  devil  the  deity  cannot  be,  in  the  strictest 
sense  of  the  term,  absolute ;  if  he  were,  there  would 
be  no  place  for  the  devil.  The  kingdom  of  the  devil 
is  a  hostile  realm  existing  over  against  the  divine 
realm.  If  the  divinity  were  absolutely  absolute, 
there  would  be  no  place  for  such  a  hostile  realm. 
We  may  find  an  illustration  of  this  in  the  different 
degrees  of  blackness  which  shadows  assume  under 
different  circumstances.  In  the  presence  of  the 
electric  light  shadows  have  a  blackness  which  they 
have  neither  in  the  gaslight  nor  in  the  daylight,  at 
least  in  that  of  our  temperate  zone.  The  gaslight 


198 


ESSAYS 


does  not  give  light  enough  for  such  shadows ;  the 
sunshine  reflected  from  the  heavens  and  from  all 
surrounding  objects  gives  a  too  pervasive  brightness. 
That  there  may  be  in  the  world  that  black  shadow 
which  we  call  the  devil,  the  divine  must  shine  with 
sufficient  but  not  with  too  much  light.  It  will  be 
seen  that  the  religions  which  have  a  place  for  such  a 
devil  are  very  few.  Furthermore  it  does  not  follow 
because  a  religion  is  adapted  to  the  recognition  of  a 
devil  that  it  necessarily  possesses  one.  The  old  He¬ 
brew  religion  was  fitted  to  support  such  a  conception, 
but  it  did  not  develop  it.  In  the  story  of  the  Gar¬ 
den  of  Eden,  as  we  find  it  in  the  Old  Testament,  there 
is  no  hint  of  a  devil.  The  notion  that  the  serpent 
was  “possessed,”  or  was  himself  a  demon,  finds  no 
justification  here.  The  story  is  accounting  for  many 
things.  It  explains,  among  the  rest,  the  prone  posi¬ 
tion  of  the  serpent,  and  the  horror  with  which  it  is 
so  often  regarded.  To  it  the  serpent  was  simply  the 
most  cunning  of  beasts. 

The  conditions  under  which  the  idea  of  a  devil,  in 
the  full  sense  of  the  term,  could  be  developed  existed 
also  in  the  Mazdean  religion.  This  religion,  like 
that  of  the  Hebrews,  was  profoundly  ethical.  The 
highest  divinity  that  it  recognized  was  wholly  good. 
Like  Yahweh,  he  was  regarded  as  the  author  of  a 
complicated  ceremonial  law ;  but  I  recall  no  expres¬ 
sion  that  detracts  from  the  essential  goodness  of  his 
nature.  Over  against  this  power  of  goodness  was 
placed  another  being  who  was  wholly  evil.  These 
two  beings  we  commonly  call,  by  their  later  names, 
Ormuzd  and  Ahriman.  These  are,  however,  corrup¬ 
tions  of  the  earlier  names  as  given  in  the  Avesta,  — 
Ahura  Mazda  and  Angra  Mainyu".  One  of  these 


THE  DEVIL 


199 


names  means  the  “wise  lord,”  and  the  other  the 
“  destructive  spirit.”  One  represented  the  light  and 
the  other  the  darkness.  Each  had  a  creation  and  a 
kingdom  of  his  own.  These  were  respectively  the 
kingdoms  of  light  and  of  darkness.  Good  men  and 
women  belonged  to  the  kingdom  of  Ahura  Mazda; 
wicked  men  and  women  belonged  to  that  of  Angra 
Mainyu.  The  world,  as  we  see  it,  is  the  mingled 
creation  of  these  two  powers.  Cold  and  snow, 
snakes,  insects,  and  vermin  generally  were  the  crea¬ 
tion  of  Angra  Mainyu.  The  principle  of  division 
would  naturally  have  led  to  giving  to  him  all  the  evil 
and  destructive  forces  of  nature.  It  was,  however, 
obviously  impossible  to  draw  such  a  line.  The  Avesta 
worshipers  were  scientific  enough  to  know  that  they 
could  not  separate  in  this  way  creatures  of  the  same 
class.  The  power  that  made  the  dove,  for  instance, 
must  also  have  made  the  falcon.  A  later  Parsee 
book  represents  Ormuzd  as  apostrophizing  the  falcon 
to  this  effect  :  “  O  Falcon,  thou  wilt  cause  me  a 
great  deal  of  trouble.  Thou  wilt  destroy  my  crea¬ 
tures  ;  but  if  I  had  not  made  thee,  Ahriman  would 
have  made  thee  as  big  as  the  body  of  a  man.”  An¬ 
other  difficulty  that  these  later  books  recognized 
occurs  in  relation  to  such  things  as  silk  and  honey. 
The  silkworm  and  the  bee  are  both  creatures  of 
Ahriman.  Ought  a  good  Parsee  to  wear  or  to  eat 
their  productions  ?  The  question  was  settled  as  the 
Parsees  settled  many  questions,  that  is  practically. 
In  this  case  they  decided  that  it  was  right  for  the 
faithful  to  get  what  good  they  could  out  of  the  enemy. 
Such  difficulties  are  similar  to  those  that  attend 
all  dualistic  theories  of  the  world.  Our  classifications 
soon  fail  us. 


200 


ESSAYS 


So  far  as  the  fundamental  principle  of  the  Persian 
religion,  abstractly  considered,  was  concerned  there 
was  no  difficulty.  Ahura  Mazda  and  Angra  Mainyu 
stand  over  against  one  another  in  sharp  contrast,  and 
their  kingdoms  are  as  distinct  as  they.  Here,  as 
everywhere,  we  find  different  interpretations,  but 
according  to  the  view  that  has  most  to  commend  it 
and  is  generally  adopted,  they  were,  so  far  as  their 
past  history  was  concerned,  like  light  and  darkness, 
coeternal.  In  the  earliest  poems  of  the  Avesta  they 
are  spoken  of  as  twins  —  also  as  Heavenly  Ones, 
meaning  that  they  possess  spiritual  natures.  They 
were  absolutely  in  antagonism.  Thus  we  read  in  the 
earliest  part  of  the  Avesta :  “  Yea,  I  will  declare  the 
world’s  two  first  spirits  of  whom  the  more  bountiful 
thus  spake  to  the  harmful:  ‘Neither  our  thoughts, 
nor  our  commands,  nor  our  understanding,  nor  our 
beliefs,  nor  our  deeds,  nor  our  consciences,  nor  our 
souls  are  at  one.’  ”  1 

Ahriman  was  somewhat  stupid.  He  was  troubled 
with  what  we  call  after-wit.  He  would  make  his  choice 
or  his  decision,  and  then  look  about  to  see  what  was 
to  be  the  outcome.  In  contrast  with  him,  as  we  have 
seen,  Ahura  Mazda  was  the  Wise  Lord.  He  foresaw 
the  end  from  the  beginning.  He  chose  his  course 
knowing  precisely  what  would  be  the  result.  This 
stupidity  on  the  one  side  and  this  knowledge  and 
foresight  on  the  other  fit  in  very  naturally  with  the 
darkness  and  the  light  which  each  represented. 

It  is  probable  that  the  Jews  received  from  the 
Persians  the  questionable  gift  of  the  devil,  or  devel¬ 
oped  the  conception  under  Persian  influence.  One 

1  Yasna,  xliv.  2,  translation  of  L.  H.  Mills.  Sacred  Books  of  the 
East ,  vol.  xxxi.  pp.  126  f. 


THE  DEVIL 


201 


thing  is  absolutely  certain.  Asmodeus,  who  figures 
in  the  apocryphal  book  of  Tobit,  is  none  other  than 
the  Mazdean  demon,  Aishma  Daeva,  with  hardly  a 
change  of  name.  This  shows  that  a  way  was  open 
by  which  the  Parsee  devils  could  enter  into  Judea  ; 
and  if  one  member  of  the  evil  host  found  his  way 
thither,  there  is  no  reason  to  think  that  he  came 
alone.  Before  the  captivity,  indeed,  the  Jews  recog¬ 
nized  demons  of  a  certain  sort.  Thus  there  were 
those  beings  called  satyrs  in  our  English  versions. 
But  these  satyrs  that  haunted  the  wilderness,  what¬ 
ever  they  may  have  been,  were  not  devils  in  any 
strict  sense  of  the  term  ;  nor  before  the  captivity  is 
there  any  trace  of  the  powers  of  evil. 

The  first  appearance  of  Satan  is  in  the  Book  of 
Zechariah.  In  the  third  chapter  of  this  prophecy  we 
see  Joshua  the  high  priest  standing  before  the  angel 
of  the  Lord,  clothed  with  filthy  garments ;  and 
“  Satan  standing  at  his  right  hand  to  resist  him. 
And  the  Lord  said  unto  Satan,  The  Lord  rebuke 
thee,  O  Satan  :  even  the  Lord  that  hath  chosen 
Jerusalem  rebuke  thee :  is  not  this  a  brand  plucked 
out  of  the  fire?”  Then  the  filthy  garments  were 
taken  from  Joshua  and  he  was  reclothed,  and  a  fair 
mitre  was  set  upon  his  head. 

In  this  passage  Joshua  the  high  priest  is  assumed 
to  be  the  representative  of  the  Jewish  people,  or  at 
least  of  the  righteous  portion  of  it.  The  Satan  who 
figures  in  it  is  regarded  by  some  scholars  as  being 
more  diabolical  than  the  Satan  of  the  Book  of  Job. 
This  view  is  based  largely  upon  the  fact  that  the 
angel  of  the  Lord  rebuked  him.  Perhaps  the  men¬ 
tion  is  too  brief  to  allow  any  dogmatic  statement  in 
regard  to  this  matter.  The  presence  of  Satan  with 


202 


ESSAYS 


a  being  spoken  of  at  first  as  “the  angel  of  the  Lord  ” 
and  later  simply  as  “the  Lord”  would  show  that  he 
has  not  yet  become  the  real  devil. 

Satan  makes  his  next  appearance  in  Jewish  litera¬ 
ture  in  the  Book  of  Job.  It  is  now  claimed  by  some 
of  the  best  authorities,  such  as  Budde  and  Cheyne, 
that  this  book  was  written  after  the  time  of  the 
captivity.  It  is  possible,  in  that  case,  that  Job  as 
well  as  Zechariah  may  have  been  influenced  by  Maz- 
dean  thought.  Certain  phenomena,  indeed,  at  first 
sight  lend  plausibility  to  the  view  that  Satan  was 
indigenous  to  Jewish  thought.'  In  the  first  place  the 
name  has  no  foreign  suggestion.  In  the  second 
place  the  Satan  of  Job  is  not  at  all  satanic  in  the 
later  meaning  of  that  term.  He  is  still  an  angel,  or 
if  he  be  the  evil  one,  he  has  entered  the  Jewish 
thought  disguised  as  an  angel  of  light.  As  an  angel 
he  is  skeptical,  not  of  righteousness  in  general, 
but  of  the  righteousness  of  certain  individuals.  This 
doubt  may  very  well  go  with  a  zeal  for  holiness  that 
would  be  satisfied  with  nothing  less  than  complete 
devotion  to  the  highest.  In  no  sense  was  he  a 
tempter.  The  wife  of  Job  could  bid  him  “curse  God 
and  die,”  but  Satan  was  only  an  interested  spectator. 
Such  a  being,  it  might  be  thought,  could  be  corrupted 
by  later  mythology  into  the  Satan  of  the  infernal 
host,  but  could  hardly  be  at  this  time  identified  with 
him  either  by  nature  or  derivation. 

When  we  look  more  closely  at  the  matter,  how¬ 
ever,  in  spite  of,  or  rather  on  account  of,  the  facts 
referred  to,  the  difficulty  is  to  a  great  extent  removed. 
In  the  first  place,  the  name  Satan  is  very  suggestive. 
In  the  Mazdean  sacred  books  Angra  Mainyu  and  the 
host  of  evil  are  often  spoken  of  simply  as  “  The  Opposi- 


THE  DEVIL 


203 


tion.”  We  often  find  that  in  the  story  of  a  war  written 
in  the  interests  of  one  party  the  other  party  is  spoken 
of  as  “The  Enemy.”  We  read  that  the  enemy  did 
this  or  that.  In  like  manner  in  the  Parsee  books  we 
read  that  “The  Opposition”  did  this  or  that.  Now 
Satan,  “  The  Adversary,”  may  very  well  stand  in  the 
place  of  “The  Opposition”  of  the  Parsees.  Dr. 
Davidson  says  in  a  note  on  Job,  speaking  of  Satan, 
“The  Hebrew  is  the  Satan,  where  the  presence  of 
the  article  shows  that  the  word  has  not  yet  become 
a  proper  name.  The  word  Satan  means  one  who 
opposes  another  in  his  purpose,  or  pretensions  and 
claims,  or  generally.”  The  word  is  thus  precisely 
what  it  would  be  if  it  had  been  suggested  by  the 
Parsee  phraseology. 

We  cannot  suppose  that  the  Jews  could  at  once 
admit  the  idea  of  an  opposition  to  their  God.  It 
would  take  time  for  their  stern  monotheism  to  relax 
sufficiently  to  permit  them  to  conceive  even  the 
possibility  of  this.  We  can  more  easily  understand 
that  they  should  grasp  at  the  notion  of  a  power 
working  more  or  less  successfully  against  themselves. 
We  can  hardly  realize  what  an  overthrow  of  their 
national  and  religious  faith  and  pride  was  involved  in 
their  defeat  and  captivity.  They  must  have  been 
ready  for  new  points  of  view  and  new  notions  of  the 
relations  between  man  and  God.  What  was  more  nat¬ 
ural  than  that  they  should  have  caught  at  the  words 
“The  Opposition,”  which  they  heard  used  so  freely 
in  respect  to  the  highest  relations  of  life ;  and  what 
more  natural  than  that  they  should  find  in  the  idea 
of  an  opposition,  directed  not  against  Yahweh  but 
against  themselves,  some  hint  towards  the  explana¬ 
tion  of  their  mysterious  experiences. 


204 


ESSAYS 


Some  scholars  have  supposed  that  Job,  like  the 
high  priest  Joshua  in  the  Book  of  Zechariah  and  the 
Servant  of  the  Lord  in  the  later  Isaiah,  may  be 
regarded  as  representing  the  Jewish  people.  What¬ 
ever  may  be  thought  of  the  probability  of  this  view 
of  the  Book  of  Job,  it  is  certain  that  the  Jews 
could  not  consider  their  own  situation  without  con¬ 
sidering  at  the  same  time  the  larger  problems  of  life 
with  which  this  was  connected ;  and  that  they  could 
not  consider  these  general  problems  without  a  refer¬ 
ence  to  themselves.  Without  formulating  any  spe¬ 
cial  theory  of  the  intention  with  which  the  book  was 
written,  we  can  imagine  the  comfort  and  the  hope 
which  it  would  bring  to  the  despondent  Jew,  and  the 
sense  of  relief  with  which  he  could  throw  off  at  least 
a  part  of  the  responsibility  of  his  situation  upon  an 
adversary  at  whose  suggestion  these  calamities  had 
come  upon  Israel,  not  as  penalty  for  its  sins,  but  as 
a  test  of  its  righteousness. 

In  the  Book  of  Chronicles  we  find  the  development 
completed.  We  read  that  Satan  stood  up  against 
Israel  and  provoked  David  to  number  Israel.  In  this 
passage  he  appears  at  once  as  the  enemy  and  the 
tempter.  The  change  through  which  the  ideas  of 
the  Jews  had  passed  is  clearly  seen,  when  we  observe 
that  in  the  passage  before  us  the  temptation  is  as¬ 
cribed  to  Satan,  which  in  the  Book  of  Samuel  was 
ascribed  to  the  Lord.1 

We  may  here  notice  that  though  the  notion  of 
Satan  may  have  come  to  the  Jew  in  part  from  without, 
it  came  at  a  time  when  he  was  just  ready  to  receive  it. 
We  have  observed  how  the  defeat  and  captivity  of  the 
Jews  must  have  aroused  speculation  that  was  some- 

1  i  Chronicles  xxi.  i  ;  2  Samuel  xxiv.  16. 


THE  DEVIL 


205 


thing  more  than  a  mere  intellectual  exercise  in  regard 
to  the  mystery  of  suffering.  At  the  same  time  another 
transformation  was  taking  place  in  their  thought. 
Their  ideal  of  the  divine  ruler  of  their  nation  had  been 
gradually  becoming  more  exalted.  We  find  this  exalta¬ 
tion  already  indicated  by  the  utterances  of  the  prophets. 
In  the  Persian  Empire  the  Jews  were  brought  into 
contact  with  the  worshipers  of  another  name,  whose 
ideal  of  the  divinity  was  no  less  exalted,  was  in  some 
respects  perhaps  more  exalted,  than  their  own.  We 
can  imagine  how  these  two  peoples  would  be  attracted 
towards  one  another  amid  the  grosser  forms  of  idola¬ 
try  by  which  they  were  surrounded.  We  can  under¬ 
stand  that  through  this  contact  the  religious  thought 
of  the  Jew  should  become  more  clear  and  the  process 
of  the  purification  of  his  faith  should  be  hastened. 
However  this  may  be,  he  had  reached  a  point  where 
he  could  no  longer  ascribe  to  the  Lord  some  of  the 
acts  which  before  had  not  seemed  foreign  to  his  na¬ 
ture.  To  the  Hebrew  his  God  had  been  everything. 
He  had  been  the  source  of  evil  and  of  good.  He 
could  tempt  to  sin  as  well  as  punish  it  after  it  had 
been  committed.  All  this  had  been  accepted  with 
unquestioning  submission.  It  is  obvious  that,  with 
the  higher  ideal  of  the  divine  being,  these  things 
should  suggest  difficulties  that,  before,  the  Jews  had 
not  dreamed  of ;  and  that  Satan  should  thus  have 
come  as  a  relief  to  the  strain  on  their  religious 
thought,  freeing  their  divinity  from  much  that  had 
begun  to  seem  unworthy  of  him.  Thus,  though  the 
thought  of  the  devil  came  partly  from  without,  it 
struck  a  line  of  natural  cleavage.  The  phenomena 
of  life  divided  themselves.  What  was  evil  was  seen 
as  the  work  of  the  evil  one,  and  the  ideal  of  the 


206 


ESSAYS 


divinity  was  surrounded  by  nothing  that  could  mar 
its  beauty. 

The  Jewish  and  Christian  thought,  it  is  true,  never 
developed  a  dualism  like  that  found  in  the  Mazdean 
religion.  In  this  latter  the  good  spirit  and  the  evil 
spirit  were  together  the  creators  of  the  universe. 
The  Jewish  and  Christian  devil  was  in  no  sense  a 
creator.  He  was  the  author  of  evil  in  the  sense  that 
he  tempted  to  sin,  and  that  he  used  against  man 
that  which  God  had  created.  While  in  the  Mazdean 
religion  the  good  spirit  and  the  evil  spirit  had  existed 
side  by  side  from  eternity,  the  devil  had  a  beginning. 
He  was  himself  created  by  God.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  wicked  spirit  of  the  Mazdeans  was  to  come  to  an 
end,  while  the  devil  was  to  live  eternally.  In  the 
past  eternity  the  lives  of  the  good  and  the  bad  spirits 
of  the  Mazdeans  ran  parallel  to  one  another.  In  the 
eternity  to  come  the  lives  of  God  and  the  devil  were 
to  run  parallel  to  one  another.  The  devil’s  eternity 
to  come,  however,  was  to  be  one  of  suffering  and 
shame.  He  is  only  so  far  a  conqueror  that  many  of 
the  souls  that  God  had  created  were  drawn  away 
from  God  by  him  and  abide  in  his  kingdom  of 
woe. 

The  fact  that  the  notion  of  the  devil  was  gradually 
evolved  has  been  generally  overlooked.  This  over¬ 
sight  has  introduced  a  singular  confusion  into  the 
later  thought  of  him.  It  has  been  assumed  that  the 
various  characteristics  that  he  possessed  at  different 
times  belonged  to  him  permanently  and  collectively. 
Thus  the  most  contradictory  functions  have  been 
ascribed  to  him.  While  he  has  been  believed  to  be 
the  tempter  to  sin,  and  the  tormentor  of  the  sinner, 
and  to  have  a  court  and  a  kingdom  of  his  own,  it  has 


THE  DEVIL 


207 


been  assumed  that  he  appears  before  God,  as  in  the 
days  of  his  comparative  innocence,  to  bring  accusa¬ 
tions  against  the  sinner  or  perhaps  the  saint.  This 
view  is  found  in  the  Book  of  Enoch,  where  the 
Satans  are  forbidden  “to  appear  before  the  Lord  of 
Spirits  to  accuse  them  who  dwell  upon  the  Earth.”  1 
We  find  it  also  in  the  Book  of  Revelation,  in  which 
we  are  told  of  “a  great  voice  in  Heaven”  which 
announced  salvation  and  the  kingdom  of  God,  add¬ 
ing  :  “  for  the  accuser  of  our  brethren  is  cast  down, 
which  accuseth  them  before  our  God  day  and  night.”  2 
This  view  has  maintained  itself  so  well  that  we  find 
it  in  the  Bible  dictionaries  of  the  present  day.  This 
part  of  the  creed,  however,  in  regard  to  the  devil  has 
long  been  a  perfunctory  repetition  of  what  was  once 
believed,  rather  than  something  that  has  entered  into 
the  actual  experience  of  the  religious  life. 

In  the  New  Testament  the  Powers  of  evil  are 
fully  recognized.  It  would  be  interesting,  were  there 
space,  to  examine  the  different  forms  which  these 
Powers  assume  here  (comparing,  for  instance,  the 
devil  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  with  that  of  the  Synoptics). 
I  will  simply  refer  to  one  of  these  forms.  “  The 
dragon,  the  old  serpent  which  is  the  Devil  and 
Satan,”  has  commonly  been  supposed  to  be  identical 
with  the  serpent  that  tempted  Eve.  That  the  two 
serpents  may  in  time  have  become  identified  is  not 
unnatural ;  but  the  serpent  of  the  Book  of  Revelation 
bears  so  striking  a  resemblance  to  one  of  the  most 
terrible  of  the  Mazdean  demons  that  we  can  hardly 
doubt  that  it  is  primarily  the  same  being.  The 
demon  to  which  I  refer  is  Azhi  Dahaka,  whose  his¬ 
tory  furnishes  one  of  the  best  illustrations  of  the 


xl.  7. 


2 


XII.  10. 


208 


ESSAYS 


tenacity  of  life  which  the  myth  may  possess.  The 
meaning  of  the  name  is  “the  destructive  serpent.” 
This  serpent  makes  his  first  appearance  in  the  Vedic 
hymns,  where  he  is  the  three-headed  monster  that 
keeps  back  the  water  in  the  clouds  until  he  is  over¬ 
powered  by  a  divinity  favorable  to  man.  From  this, 
or  a  similar  source,  he  passes  into  the  Parsee  myth¬ 
ology.  In  the  poems  of  Firdousi,  who  was  born 
about  the  year  950  of  our  era,  we  find  him  existing 
with  unimpaired  vitality.  Here  he  appears  as  Zohak, 
a  wicked  king,  whose  name  is  simply  a  contraction 
of  Azhi  Dahaka,  and  who  further  shows  his  identity 
with  this  monster  by  the  fact  that  a  serpent’s  head 
grows  out  of  each  shoulder,  so  that  he  has  three 
heads  like  his  prototype.  In  some  of  the  histories 
of  Persia,  Zohak  figures  as  a  veritable  king,  the  ser¬ 
pent’s  heads  being  regarded  as  symbolical  of  his 
cruelty,  or  otherwise  similarly  explained.  Neverthe¬ 
less,  as  Professor  Roth  has  shown,1  not  only  he  but 
all  the  characters  that  figure  in  his  story  are  taken 
from  the  cloud-land  of  the  mythology  of  the  Vedic 
hymns.  The  destructive  serpent  of  the  Mazdean 
sacred  books  was  conquered  and  chained  and  kept 
thus  a  prisoner  till  the  time  of  the  last  battle,  in 
which  he  was  to  be  slain.  In  the  Book  of  Revela- 
,  tion  we  are  told  that  “  the  dragon,  the  old  serpent, 
which  is  the  devil  and  Satan,”  was  imprisoned  in 
the  bottomless  pit  for  a  thousand  years,  but  was  let 
loose  for  a  time  just  before  the  final  consummation. 
The  resemblance  between  the  two  stories  seems  too 
great  to  be  merely  accidental. 

We  may  notice  one  or  two  other  points  of  resem¬ 
blance  between  the  Mazdean  eschatology  and  that 

1  Zeitschrift  der  Deutschen  Morgenlandischen  Gesellschaft ,  ii.  216. 


THE  DEVIL 


209 


of  the  New  Testament,  which  are  less  striking  than 
the  one  just  referred  to,  but  have  an  interest  in  con¬ 
nection  with  that.  In  the  last  act  of  the  Mazdean 
eschatology  we  read  that  “  the  serpent  is  burned  in 
the  molten  metal.”  In  the  Book  of  Revelation  we 
read  that  the  devil,  who,  a  few  verses  before,  had 
been  spoken  of  as  “the  old  serpent,”  “was  cast  into 
the  lake  of  fire  and  brimstone.”  There  is  a  certain 
vagueness  about  “the  serpent”  that  was  burned  in 
the  molten  metal  of  the  Mazdeans ;  but  none  the 
less  it  is  a  striking  coincidence  that  the  two  eschato¬ 
logies  should  each  end  with  the  picturesque  spectacle 
of  a  demon  serpent  cast  into  a  lake  of  fire.  In  the 
Mazdean  story  of  the  last  things  Hell  is  burned  out 
so  that  it  becomes  clean  and  pure.  In  the  Book  of 
Revelation  Death  and  Hades  are  cast  into  the  lake 
of  fire. 

While  the  resemblances  between  the  eschatology 
of  the  New  Testament  and  that  of  the  religion  of 
the  Parsees  are  so  close  that  they  point  to  a  common 
origin,  it  should  be  noted  that  the  Bundehesh,  in 
which  these  details  are  found,  cannot,  in  the  form 
in  which  it  at  present  exists,  be  regarded,  according 
to  Dr.  West,  the  translator  of  this  work  in  the  “  Sa¬ 
cred  Books  of  the  East,”  as  earlier  than  the  seventh 
century  of  our  era.  Indeed,  he  is  disposed  to  put 
it  still  later.  The  same  authority  insists,  however, 
that  it  is  very  probable  that  we  have  in  this  work 
“a  translation  or  an  epitome”  of  a  work  that  ex¬ 
isted  before  the  time  of  Darius,  but  is  now  lost.1 
Thus  while  it  cannot  be  proved  that  the  statements 
that  have  been  quoted  are  ancient  enough  to  have 
influenced  Jewish  and  Christian  thought,  yet  the 

1  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  The  Bundahis,  vol.  v.  pp.  xli  f.,  and  xxiv. 


210 


ESSAYS 


probabilities  are  that  they  may  have  been.  A  com¬ 
parison  of  the  forms  which  the  story  assumes  in  the 
New  Testament  and  in  the  Parsee  tradition  shows,  I 
think,  that  if  there  was  a  transfer  of  mythology  from 
one  religion  to  the  other,  the  original  is  to  be  sought 
in  the  account  as  given  by  the  Parsees.  In  this,  each 
event  forms  a  part  of  a  long  story  in  which  the  inci¬ 
dents  are  connected;  while  in  the  New  Testament 
we  have  isolated  fragments.  This  relationship  may 
be  illustrated  by  an  incident  of  a  kind  different  from 
those  that  we  have  considered.  We  read  in  the 
Second  Epistle  of  Peter  that  the  earth  “  shall  melt 
with  fervent  heat.”  This  affirmation  stands  alone. 
Neither  cause  nor  result  of  this  catastrophe  is  sug¬ 
gested.  In  the  Bundehesh  we  are  told  that  the  earth 
shall  be  struck  by  a  comet  and  be  melted  by  the  heat 
produced  by  the  blow.  After  the  resurrection  both 
the  good  and  the  evil  shall  be  plunged  into  this 
molten  mass.  The  wicked  shall  be  purified  by  the 
bath,  though  with  great  torment.  The  good  shall 
find  the  experience  a  pleasant  one.  As  the  result  of 
this  melting,  the  mountains  and  the  ice,  which  were 
believed  to  form  the  home  of  the  demons,  shall  dis¬ 
appear,  and  the  earth  shall  be  left  fair  and  smooth. 

The  fact  that  the  devil,  in  his  developed  form,  was 
not  indigenous  to  Jewish  thought  is  illustrated  by  the 
various  and  sometimes  conflicting  stories  of  the  origin 
of  Satan  and  other  demons.  According  to  one  account 
Satan  was  created  simultaneously  with  Eve.  Accord¬ 
ing  to  another,  as  Sammael,  he  was  the  head  of  the 
heavenly  host  and  fell  through  an  ambition  to  make 
upon  the  earth  an  empire  for  himself.  Other  stories 
relate  how  angels  were  drawn  from  Heaven  through 
love  of  the  daughters  of  Eve.  Some  demons  were 


THE  DEVIL 


21 1 


directly  created  by  God  ;  some  sprang  from  the  union 
of  Adam  or  Eve  with  devils.1 

Although  the  myth  of  the  fall  of  Satan  was  the 
most  natural  method  by  which  the  devilish  element 
could  be  introduced  into  Jewish  thought,  it  yet  dis¬ 
turbs  somewhat  the  ideal  of  this  element.  The  rebel 
angel  is  not,  like  Angra  Mainyu,  a  being  whose 
sole  essence  is  hatred  of  the  good.  He  is  a  being 
who  has  within  himself  possibilities  of  goodness. 
This  inner  contradiction  in  the  nature  of  Satan  has 
troubled  some  persons  in  reading  the  “  Paradise 
Lost.”  Milton,  as  the  exigencies  of  his  poem  re¬ 
quired,  emphasizes  particularly  the  rebellion  and  the 
fall  of  Satan.  Satan  is  really  the  hero  of  his  poem, 
and  is  so  much  like  the  heroes  that  men  generally 
agree  to  honor  that  we  can  hardly  help  giving  our 
meed  of  praise  to  him.  An  angel  high  in  rank,  with 
power  to  lead  into  rebellion  a  large  part  of  the 
heavenly  host,  he  could  hardly  have  been  painted  by 
Milton  as  a  being  less  proud  and  noble  than  he  is 
drawn.  After  his  fall  he  is  still,  as  Milton  tells  us, 
an  archangel  ruined.  So  far  is  he  from  the  purely 
devilish,  that  we  are  somewhat  shocked  when  we  find 
him  doing  the  meaner  work  of  his  new  position, 
crouching  in  the  shape  of  a  toad  by  the  side  of  the 
sleeping  Eve. 

It  should  be  noted  further  that  the  element  of  the 
archangel  which  is  embodied  in  the  Jewish  myth, 
and  which  Milton  so  accentuates,  shows  itself  as 
something  more  or  less  foreign  to  the  fundamental 
notion  of  the  devil  by  the  fact  that  it  has,  to  a  great 
degree,  passed  out  of  the  common  consciousness. 

1  Weber’s  System  der  Altsynagogalen  oder  Palastinischen  Theologie , 

pp.  242  ff. 


212 


ESSAYS 


In  the  general  thought  of  the  devil  in  Christendom 
the  angelic  position  which  he  once  occupied  has  been 
largely  left  out  of  the  account.  He  has  been  taken 
as  the  devil  pure  and  simple,  if  these  words  may  be 
used  in  regard  to  a  being  so  artful  and  so  impure, 
and  his  previous  history,  for  the  most  part,  has  been 
ignored. 

The  mediaeval  devil  differs  in  many  respects  both 
from  that  of  the  Mazdeans  and  that  of  the  New 
Testament.  The  sources  from  which,  in  part,  at 
least,  he  drew  his  fundamental  being  are  sublime. 
There  is  a  certain  sublimity  in  the  power  of  darkness 
and  sin  that  in  the  Mazdean  thought  set  itself  to 
destroy  the  creation  of  light  and  holiness.  There  is 
something  sublime  in  the  idea  of  the  three-headed 
serpent  that,  uncounted  ages  ago,  sought  to  retain 
for  himself  the  water  of  the  clouds,  and  then  in  the 
Mazdean  belief  became  the  most  terrible  monster 
that  assailed  men.  There  is  something  sublime  in 
the  conception  of  the  archangel  who  dared  to  rebel 
against  God,  and  who  could  lead  with  him  a  part  of 
Heaven’s  host.  But  the  mediaeval  devil  is  terrible 
and  grotesque  rather  than  sublime. 

This  later  demon  is  a  melange  of  various  elements. 
“He  is,”  says  Grimm,  “  at  once  of  Jewish,  Christian, 
Heathen,  heretical,  elfish,  gigantic,  and  spectral 
stock.”  1  He  might  have  added  Mazdean  and  I  know 
not  what  beside.  I  have  been  unable  to  satisfy  my¬ 
self  whence  come  his  limp  and  his  cloven  foot. 
Grimm  derives  his  lameness  from  the  fall  of  Lucifer 
from  Heaven.2  Simrock  explains  it  from  an  accident 
that  happened  to  one  of  the  goats  which  Thor  was  in 

1  Grimm’s  Deutsche  Mythologies  Zweite  Ausgabe,  ii.  938. 

2  Ibid.  p.  945. 


THE  DEVIL 


213 


the  habit  of  driving.  One  night  as  he  was  traveling 
with  Loki,  he  stayed  at  a  peasant’s  house.  He 
struck  the  goats  with  his  hammer,  skinned  them, 
feasted  on  the  flesh,  and  gave  the  skin  and  the  bones 
into  the  care  of  the  peasant.  The  peasant  broke  the 
bones  of  one  of  the  legs  in  order  to  suck  the  marrow 
out  of  it.  The  next  morning  the  skin  and  the  bones 
were  restored  by  Thor  to  life ;  but  one  goat  limped 
ever  after.  The  gods  were  sometimes  represented 
under  the  emblem  of  the  animal  most  associated 
with  them.  As  the  world  became  Christian  the 
Teutonic  gods  became  demons,  and  thus  Thor’s 
limping  goat  suggested  the  cloven  feet  and  the  limp 
of  the  devil.  The  horse’s  hoof,  so  commonly  associ¬ 
ated  with  the  devil  in  Germany,  Sim  rock  derives  in  a 
similar  manner  from  the  horse  of  Odin.1  I  have  seen 
an  engraving  of  a  bas-relief  not  later  than  the  third 
century  of  our  era,  in  which,  already,  a  demon  was 
represented  with  cloven  feet.2  This  bas-relief  was  in 
the  province  of  Numidia. 

The  grotesque  form  of  the  mediaeval  devil  fitted 
him  well  for  the  place  of  buffoon  which  he  sometimes 
filled  in  the  Mysteries.  For  this  his  stupidity  fitted 
him  still  better.  In  spite  of  the  sublimity  which 
we  may  associate  with  the  great  prototype  of  the 
devil,  Angra  Mainyu,  there  was  in  him,  as  we  have 
seen,  a  certain  stupidity  which  might  suggest  some¬ 
thing  of  the  buffoon.  The  devil  is  cunning,  but  he  is 
not  wise.  This  recognition  of  the  foolishness  of  the 
devil  grows  out  of  a  robust  faith  in  God.  The  devil 
continually  seeks  to  circumvent  Him,  and  in  spite  of 

1  Deutsche  Mythologies  pp.  240  f. 

2  Ephemeris  Epigraphica  corporis  inscriptionum  Latinarum  supple- 
mentum.  Edita  jussu  Instituti  Archaeologici  Romani,  vol.  v.  p.  441. 


214 


ESSAYS 


unnumbered  failures  believes  that  he  is  going  to  suc¬ 
ceed.  With  all  his  cunning  he  simply  outwits  him¬ 
self.  In  this  the  devil  stands  simply  as  the  symbol 
of  the  craft  of  wicked  men.  Consider,  for  instance, 
the  arts  of  the  small  politician.  Consider  his  intrigues, 
his  demagogism,  his  corruption.  Consider  how  he 
looks  upon  the  governmental  service  as  a  machine 
designed  to  subserve  his  petty  ambitions.  All  this  he 
calls  “practical  politics.”  In  spite  of  all  his  shrewd¬ 
ness  he  is  not  practical  enough  to  know  that  the  coun¬ 
try  to-day  demands  pure  and  intelligent  patriotism, 
and  that  she  stands  ready  to  reward  it  with  the  high¬ 
est  honors.  Thus  the  devil  is  always  “  penny  wise 
and  pound  foolish.” 

A  symbolic  illustration  of  all  this  is  found  in  the 
devil  of  the  early  Christian  theology.  He  seized  the 
Christ,  thinking  that  he  held  a  man,  and  was  amazed 
to  find  that  he  had  to  do  with  a  god.  By  thus  over¬ 
stepping  his  rights  he  lost  his  claim  on  man,  and  his 
empire  was  overthrown.  As  Peter  Lombard  ex¬ 
pressed  it,  Christ  set  his  cross  as  a  trap,  and  used  his 
body  as  a  bait ;  and  the  poor  foolish  devil  was  caught 
thereby. 

Another  symbol  of  the  confidence  that  wicked¬ 
ness  has  in  its  own  arts  is  found  in  the  expression 
that  speaks  of  the  devil  as  “the  ape  of  God.”  This 
form  of  speech  has  a  striking  application  to  Angra 
Mainyu,  who  imitated  the  creation  of  Ahura-Mazda 
piece  by  piece.  The  devil  seems  to  fancy  that  if  he 
will  imitate  in  any  way  the  divine  methods  he  will 
share  the  divine  omnipotence.  The  ape  that  turns 
over  the  leaves  of  a  book  as  it  has  seen  a  man  turn 
them  hardly  realizes,  we  may  suppose,  that  it  is  not 
doing  what  the  man  did.  The  devil  of  superstition 


THE  DEVIL 


215 


had  his  sabbaths,  and  his  convocations  at  which  he 
received  the  homage  of  his  followers.  So  sin  strives 
to  imitate  or  to  use  the  methods  and  the  machinery 
of  righteousness.  The  kingdom  of  the  devil  is  simply 
an  inverted  kingdom  of  God,  in  which  selfishness 
is  the  uniting  power  instead  of  love,  and  to  the  up¬ 
holders  of  the  kingdom  this  seems  to  furnish  the 
strongest  bond  of  union. 

This  stupidity  of  the  devil,  this  shrewdness  so 
sharp  that  it  defeats  itself,  this  sight  that  is  without 
insight,  this  assumption  of  omnipotence  by  one  who 
is  a  vanishing  element  in  God’s  universe,  may  be 
associated  with  an  inner  contradiction  that  underlies 
the  entire  notion  of  the  devil.  He  seems  to  be 
something,  yet  he  is  really  nothing.  The  most  pro¬ 
found  theologians  have  insisted  that  sin  is  a  lack 
rather  than  a  presence.  Nothing  is  sinful  in  itself. 
The  sinful  act  is  such  because  it  fills  the  place  of  a 
higher  and  better  act.  No  tendency  is  wrong ;  it 
becomes  so  only  when  it  is  left  alone  by  the  failure 
of  other  tendencies  which  should  complement  it,  and, 
on  occasion,  overpower  it.  Sin,  then,  is  negative 
and  not  positive.  This  is  well  illustrated  by  the 
fact  that  originally  the  devil  was  the  incarnation  of 
darkness,  while  darkness  is  only  the  absence  of  light. 
I  once  heard  Emerson  illustrate  in  a  lecture  this 
aspect  of  sin  by  the  fact  that  while  men  use  the 
name  of  God  to  strengthen  a  positive  affirmation,  the 
name  of  the  devil  is  used  to  strengthen  a  negation. 
He  illustrated  the  point  by  the  familiar  lines  :  — 

“  The  devil  was  sick,  the  devil  a  monk  would  be ; 

The  devil  was  well,  the  devil  a  monk  was  he.” 

When  we  consider  that  Goethe  recognized  fully  this 
aspect  of  the  devil,  the  personality  of  Mephistopheles, 


2l6 


ESSAYS 


the  incarnation  of  a  negation,  is  seen  to  be  one  of  the 
most  marvelous  creations  of  genius.  Of  course  this 
inner  contradiction  must  at  last  become  recognized. 
A  mere  negation  cannot  exist.  Thus  the  devil  has 
always  carried  within  himself  the  elements  of  his  own 
destruction. 

A  familiar  proverb  bids  us  “give  the  devil  his 
due.”  It  would  be  unfair  to  close  this  sketch  of  so 
remarkable  a  personage  without  calling  attention  to 
the  one  virtue  which  he  appears  to  have  possessed. 
It  may  occasion  surprise  when  I  state  that  this  virtue 
is  that  of  fidelity.  My  familiarity  with  devil  lore  is 
not  sufficient  to  enable  me  to  give  him  a  certificate 
of  absolute  honesty ;  but,  so  far  as  my  memory  goes, 
the  devil  could  always  be  trusted  to  keep  a  bargain. 
This  was  true  of  Ahriman,  who  held  fast  to  an  agree¬ 
ment  that  he  made  with  Ormuzd  as  to  the  conduct 
of  the  war  between  them,  though  it  led  to  his  defeat. 
In  all  the  stories  that  I  recall  in  which  a  pact  was 
made  with  the  devil,  it  was  not  he  who  tried  to 
squirm  out  of  it.  We  all  remember  the  many  ques¬ 
tionable  methods  which  have  been  adopted  by  those 
who  had  sold  themselves,  or  others,  to  him  to  escape 
making  the  delivery  by  some  technical  subterfuge, 
even  after  they  had  received  the  price.  In  all  these 
transactions  it  has  not  been  the  devil  that  has  ap¬ 
peared  to  greatest  disadvantage.  So  far  as  I  can 
recall  the  various  narratives,  if  the  devil  makes  a 
promise  he  always  keeps  it,  even  to  his  own  loss. 
The  serpent  in  the  Garden  was,  as  we  have  seen,  not 
the  devil,  but  he  was  performing  the  part  of  one,  and 
may  illustrate,  at  least,  this  trait  of  the  devilish 
nature.  By  eating  the  forbidden  fruit  men  did  be¬ 
come  as  gods,  so  far,  at  least,  as  the  knowledge  ef 


THE  DEVIL 


217 


good  and  evil  is  concerned ;  and  this  is  all  that  was 
promised.  We  have,  indeed,  high  authority  for 
the  saying  that  the  devil  is  “a  liar  and  the  father 
thereof.”  What  I  have  claimed  may  be  true  with¬ 
out  practically  contradicting  this  statement.  The 
devil  could  change  the  truth  into  a  lie.  His  words 
could  have  the  effect  of  falsehood,  and  still  remain, 
so  far  as  the  letter  was  concerned,  true.  The  fruit 
that  he  promised  might  prove  to  be  ‘‘apples  of  Go¬ 
morrah,”  but  it  would  certainly  be  delivered.  The 
same  is  more  largely  true  than  moralists  are  some¬ 
times  willing  to  grant  of  the  wages  offered  by  sin,  of 
which  the  devil  is  the  personification.  Jesus  said  of 
hypocrites,  “Verily  I  say  unto  you,  They  have  re¬ 
ceived  their  reward.” 

It  must  further  be  admitted  that,  while  the  devil 
has  done  much  evil,  he  has  also  been  a  potent  ele¬ 
ment  in  the  moral  development  of  the  world.  We 
can  hardly  realize  how  the  abstraction  and  personifi¬ 
cation  of  evil  has  tended  to  produce  a  profound 
recognition  of  sin.  When  the  devil  has  not  been 
known,  men  have  been  in  a  state  of  comparative 
innocence  ;  and  so  far  as  they  have  done  wrong  they 
have  been  like  disobedient  children.  When  the  devil 
is  recognized  as  a  hostile  force  over  against  the  power 
of  the  good,  what  was  before  simply  disobedience  has 
become  the  act  of  a  traitor. 

Furthermore,  sins  in  general  are  simply  concrete. 
They  are  the  yielding  to  this  passion,  the  failing  to 
yield  to  that  impulse.  So  soon  as  their  common 
element  of  sinfulness  is  abstracted,  is  put  over  against 
the  separate  acts  and  embodied  in  a  real  person,  then 
the  idea  of  sin,  as  such,  is  aroused  as  it  could  not  be 
aroused  under  other  circumstances.  See,  for  exam- 


2l8 


ESSAYS 


pie,  how  different  our  thought  of  the  world  is  since 
we  have  reached  the  idea  of  matter  which  is  simply 
the  abstraction  of  all  objectivity.  The  world  has 
thereby  become  mechanical  as  it  never  was  before. 
Spirit  being  recognized  as  the  element  of  life,  we 
speak  of  matter  as  dead.  As  the  abstraction  of 
matter  brings  to  consciousness  the  material  aspect  of 
the  world,  so  the  abstraction  of  sin,  in  the  form  of  the 
devil,  brings  to  consciousness  the  sinfulness  of  the 
world. 

The  influence  of  the  devil  in  the  development  of 
man  may  be  illustrated  from  another  point  of  view. 
In  the  struggle  with  sin  there  is  a  certain  help  in 
having  the  power  of  sin  set  over  against  the  spirit. 
To  have  an  enemy  to  deal  with  gives  point  to  the 
struggle  and  definiteness  to  the  blow.  While  some¬ 
times  the  indolent  soul  has  been  glad  to  throw  off  its 
responsibility  for  evil  and  put  it  on  the  shoulders  of 
the  adversary  of  souls,  the  struggles  of  many  another 
against  sin  have  been  helped  by  having  a  real  and 
concrete  foe  to  deal  with.  I  have  no  doubt  that  after 
Luther  had  flung  his  inkstand  at  the  devil,  though 
the  wall  was  stained,  his  soul  was  the  cleaner. 

“The  evil  one  is  gone,”  said  Mephistopheles,  “  but 
the  evil  ones  remain.”  Well  will  it  be  for  the  men 
and  women  of  a  more  enlightened  age  if  they  fight 
the  battle  for  righteousness  with  anything  of  the 
vigor  which  their  forefathers  showed  in  their  warfare 
with  the  devil. 


IX 


THE  POEMS  OF  EMERSON 

We  may  find  an  illustration  of  the  greatness  of 
Emerson  in  the  fact  that  his  admirers  differ  so  widely 
among  themselves  in  regard  to  the  quality  of  his 
genius.  Matthew  Arnold  would  seem  to  have 
praised  Emerson  sufficiently  when  he  said:  “As 
Wordsworth’s  poetry  is  the  most  important  work 
done  in  verse  in  our  language  during  the  present 
century,  so  Emerson’s  ‘Essays’  are,  I  think,  the 
most  important  work  done  in  prose  ;  ”  yet  the  lecture 
in  which  this  judgment  was  announced  was  received 
by  many  with  an  indignant  protest,  not  so  much  be¬ 
cause  they  would  praise  Emerson  more  highly,  as 
because  they  would  praise  him  differently.  To  some 
he  is,  first  of  all,  a  philosopher,  dealing  with  the  most 
profound  problems  of  thought.  To  others  he  is 
chiefly  a  preacher  or  moralist.  While  to  some  he  is 
a  poet  everywhere  but  in  his  poems,  others  draw 
from  his  poetry  a  delight  which  the  verses  of  few 
other  poets  can  afford.  To  these  the  genius  of 
Emerson  appears  to  find  in  his  poems  its  most  com¬ 
plete  and  worthy  expression.  When  I  think  of  the 
essays  on  “Spiritual  Laws,”  “The  Over -Soul,” 
“Compensation,”  and  the  rest,  this  last  judgment 
seems  a  bold  one;  but  when  I  think  of  “The  Pro¬ 
blem,”  the  “Each  and  All,”  the  “  Ode  to  Beauty,” 
the  “Threnody,”  and  others,  I  feel  that  it  is  just. 


220 


ESSAYS 


Before  directly  considering  the  poems  of  Emerson  it 
may  be  well  to  cast  such  a  hasty  glance  as  our  space 
may  permit  at  his  philosophy  and  his  ethics.  In  this 
way  we  shall  learn  something  of  the  habit  of  his 
mind,  and  of  his  attitude  towards  the  world.  We 
shall  know,  for  instance,  whether  his  poetry  is  the 
poetry  of  a  philosopher,  or  his  philosophy  is  the  philo¬ 
sophy  of  a  poet. 

The  most  formal  statement  which  Emerson  has 
made  of  his  philosophy  is  found  in  his  early  work 
entitled  “  Nature.”  In  this  he  enumerates  the  vari¬ 
ous  relations  in  which  nature  stands  to  us.  The 
great  charm  of  the  book  lies  in  its  enthusiasm  for 
nature.  We  shall  hardly  find  anywhere  a  more  rap¬ 
turous  hymn  uttered  in  her  praise.  The  catalogue  of 
special  relations  which  nature  bears  to  us  is  but  an 
expansion  and  justification  of  this  enthusiasm.  We 
are  at  present  concerned  only  with  whatever  in  this 
treatise  throws  light  upon  Emerson’s  philosophy. 
We  find  him  taking  distinctly  the  idealistic  view  of 
the  world.  I  do  not  know  whether  at  the  time  of 
writing  this  work  he  had  been  brought  into  contact 
with  the  thought  of  Fichte,  but  the  position  taken 
bears  a  very  marked  resemblance  to  that  of  this 
philosopher.  The  world,  we  are  told,  has  no  existence 
except  for  and  in  ourselves.  It  is  “  the  apocalypse 
of  the  mind.”  Yet  it  is  not  the  product  of  our  own 
mental  activity.  “  The  Supreme  Being  does  not 
build  up  nature  around  us,  but  puts  it  forth  through 
us.”  Of  such  theorizing  we  find  little  trace  in 
Emerson’s  later  writings.  Two  ideas,  however,  are 
insisted  upon  in  this  essay  which  form  the  basis  or 
inspiration  of  all  his  works.  One  is  that  the  mind  of 
man  is  open  to  the  Infinite  Mind.  “  Man,”  he  tells 


THE  POEMS  OF  EMERSON 


221 


us,  “has  access  to  the  entire  mind  of  the  Creator.” 
The  other  is  that  nature  in  its  completeness  and  its 
detail  is  symbolic.  “Every  natural  fact,”  he  says, 
“is  a  symbol  of  some  spiritual  fact.”  These  two 
thoughts,  one  in  regard  to  the  mind  of  man,  and  the 
other  in  regard  to  nature,  form  the  most  important 
elements  of  his  philosophy.  From  the  first  come 
that  boldness  and  that  humility  which  in  beautiful 
union  mark  his  mental  attitude.  He  is  bold  to  trust 
his  thought  because  it  springs  from  this  infinite 
source  ;  he  is  humble  because  it  is  God  himself  that 
sends  the  thought.  His  appeal  to  self-reliance  is 
really  an  appeal  to  return  to  the  source  of  the  life 
that  is  manifested  in  every  one,  so  far  as  each  will 
suffer  it  to  reveal  itself.  The  second  of  these 
thoughts  explains  the  loftiness  of  his  speech  towards 
nature  as  a  whole  and  the  minute  carefulness  of  his 
observation  of  each  slightest  phase  of  the  life  of 
nature.  One  would  sometimes  be  tempted  to  think 
him  a  mere  dreamer ;  but  no  student  of  science 
could  have  more  regard  for  the  delicate  and  accu¬ 
rate  study  of  nature  than  he.  If  nature  is  a  symbol, 
we  must,  if  we  would  catch  its  meaning,  take  it  as  it 
really  is.  Two  subordinate  thoughts  are  connected 
with  this  general  one  of  the  symbolism  of  nature. 
One  is  that  the  poetic  imagination  is  the  power  by 
which  the  world’s  riddle  is  to  be  guessed.  We  may 
quote  as  a  single  illustration  of  this  position  the  fol¬ 
lowing  passage  from  the  essay  on  “  The  Poet.”  Emer¬ 
son  here  says  :  “We  are  symbols  and  inhabit  sym¬ 
bols.  Workmen,  work  and  tools,  words  and  things, 
birth  and  death,  all  are  emblems  ;  but  we  sympathize 
with  the  symbols,  and  being  infatuated  with  the 
economical  uses  of  things,  we  do  not  know  that  they 


222 


ESSAYS 


are  thoughts.  The  poet,  by  an  ulterior  intellectual 
perception,  gives  them  a  power  which  makes  their 
old  use  forgotten,  and  puts  eyes  and  a  tongue  into 
every  dumb  and  inanimate  object.  .  .  .  As  the  eyes 
of  Lynceus  were  said  to  see  through  the  earth,  so 
the  poet  turns  the  world  to  glass,  and  shows  us  all 
things  in  their  right  series  and  procession.” 

The  other  of  these  subordinate  thoughts  is  that  in 
fact  the  riddle  never  has  been  guessed.  Hints  and 
glimpses  we  have,  it  is  true.  When  some  outward 
beauty  suggests  a  lofty  image  to  the  soul,  so  far  it 
has  fulfilled  its  end.  But  hints  and  glimpses  are  all 
that  we  have  reached  : 

“  Our  brothers  have  not  read  it, 

Not  one  has  found  the  key; 

And  henceforth  we  are  comforted  — 

We  are  but  such  as  they.” 

In  the  poem  on  Monadnoc  it  is  even  implied  that 
when  her  secret  is  guessed  nature  herself  will  disap¬ 
pear.  The  mountain  is  represented  as  saying  : 

“  And  when  the  greater  comes  again 
With  my  secret  in  his  brain, 

I  shall  pass,  as  glides  my  shadow, 

Daily  over  hill  and  meadow.” 

Thus  nature  stands  before  us  as  a  great  mystery, 
of  which  its  beauty  is  the  truest  revelation  and  the 
poet  is  the  truest  seer.  We  watch  and  listen  and 
wait,  seeing  just  enough  of  the  meaning  of  the  whole 
to  inspire  us  with  a  larger  hope.  Obviously  this,  so 
far  as  it  can  be  called  a  philosophy,  is  the  philosophy 
of  a  poet. 

If  we  turn,  now,  to  the  ethics  of  Emerson,  we 
shall  reach  a  somewhat  similar  result.  It  cannot  be 
questioned  that  Emerson  was  a  preacher  of  the  most 


THE  POEMS  OF  EMERSON 


223 


exalted  type.  It  cannot  be  doubted  that  he  taught  a 
pure  and  lofty  morality.  At  the  same  time,  an  ex¬ 
amination  of  his  writings  shows  that  he  was  not  pri¬ 
marily  a  preacher  or  a  moralist,  unless  we  give  to 
these  words  a  sense  quite  different  from  that  in  which 
they  are  ordinarily  used.  We  can,  indeed,  only  ad¬ 
mire  the  pure  moral  purpose  that  controlled  the  life 
of  Emerson.  He  gave  up  his  profession  on  account 
of  conscientious  scruples  in  regard  to  administration  of 
the  communion  service  ;  and  we  may  find  an  illustra¬ 
tion  of  the  sanity  and  serenity  of  his  mind  in  the  fact 
that,  so  far  as  I  now  remember,  no  allusion  to  this 
matter,  which  cost  him  so  dear,  is  to  be  found  in  his 
writings.  In  the  days  of  slavery  he  did  not  hesitate 
to  take  his  place  by  the  side  of  the  most  active  re¬ 
formers.  I  am  told  that  when  he  spoke  upon  this 
theme  he  stood  upon  the  platform  in  the  face  of  the 
infuriated  mob  as  serene,  to  all  appearance,  as  if  he 
had  been  standing  at  the  desk  of  the  Freeman  Place 
Chapel.  When  the  yells  of  the  crowd  interrupted 
him  he  would  wait  in  perfect  quiet  until  silence  was 
restored,  and  then  would  take  up  his  sentence  at  the 
precise  point  where  it  was  broken  off,  and  proceed  as 
calmly  as  if  no  interruption  had  occurred.  This  he 
could  do ;  but  I  am  told  that  he  did  not  like  it.  He 
felt  that  somehow  his  higher  life  had  been  invaded. 
Perhaps  his  spirit  was  more  disturbed  than  it  ap¬ 
peared.  He  himself  says  of  nature:  “  When  we 
come  out  of  the  caucus,  or  the  bank,  or  the  abolition 
convention,  or  the  temperance  meeting,  or  the  Tran¬ 
scendental  Club,  into  the  fields  and  woods,  she  says 
to  us,  ‘  So  hot,  my  little  sir?  ’  ” 

In  his  teaching  he  would  summon  us  to  beauty  of 
living  rather  than  to  rightness  of  living.  This  was 


224 


ESSAYS 


not  because  he  underrated  the  moralities,  but  because 
he  wanted  to  take  some  things  for  granted.  What  he 
taught  was  a  strong,  self-reliant  life  that  can  afford 
to  be  self-forgetful  because  it  is  so  absorbed  in  the 
contemplation  of  the  beauty  of  the  highest  ideal. 
Not  so  much  virtue  as  virtus  was  the  object  of  his 
teaching.  Expressions  continually  escape  him  to 
show  how  irksome  he  found  moralizing  of  the  com¬ 
mon  sort.  He  seems  to  feel  that  our  moral  nature 
is  vitiated  by  any  interference  of  our  will.  He  has 
no  patience  with  the  idea  that  the  man  who  strives 
with  temptation  is  better  than  one  who  is  above 
temptation.  “  Either  God  is  there,  or  He  is  not 
there.”  “When  we  see  a  soul  whose  acts  are  all 
regal,  graceful,  and  pleasant  as  roses,  we  must  thank 
God  that  such  things  can  be,  and  are,  and  not  turn 
sourly  on  the  angel,  and  say,  ‘  Crump  is  a  better 
man,  with  his  grunting  resistance  to  all  his  native 
devils.’  ” 

Emerson  has  been  called  a  Franklin  and  a  Hafiz, 
but  he  was  a  Greek  no  less  truly  than  an  American 
and  an  Oriental.  He  was  a  Greek  in  his  love  of 
beauty,  of  health,  of  elegance,  of  good  manners.  “  I 
could  better  eat,”  he  tells  us,  “with  one  who  did  not 
respect  the  truth  or  the  laws  than  with  a  sloven  and 
unpresentable  person.”  “If  you  have  not  slept,”  he 
says,  “  or  if  you  have  slept,  or  if  you  have  headache, 
or  sciatica,  or  leprosy,  or  thunder-stroke,  I  beseech 
you  by  all  good  angels  to  hold  your  peace  and  not 
pollute  the  morning,  to  which  all  the  housemates 
bring  serene  and  pleasant  thoughts,  by  corruption 
and  groans.”  This  whole  aspect  of  Emerson’s  na¬ 
ture  is  well  expressed  in  the  short  poem  called  “  The 
Park,”  which  begins  : 


THE  POEMS  OF  EMERSON 


22$ 


“  The  prosperous  and  beautiful 
To  me  seem  not  to  wear 
The  yoke  of  conscience  masterful 
Which  galls  me  everywhere.” 

Perhaps  the  following  lines  express  most  con¬ 
sciously  the  trait  that  we  are  considering  : 

“  'A  new  commandment,’  said  the  smiling  muse, 

‘  I  give  my  darling  son  :  Thou  shalt  not  preach.’ 

Luther,  Fox,  Behmen,  Swedenborg,  grew  pale, 

And,  on  the  instant,  rosier  clouds  upbore 
Hafiz  and  Shakespeare  with  their  shining  choirs.” 

These  passages,  and  many  others  that  might  be 
quoted,  show  that,  however  lofty  was  his  moral  ideal, 
and  however  inspiring  his  moral  teaching,  primarily 
Emerson  was  a  lover  of  the  beautiful.  This  is  not 
to  imply  that  he  would  sacrifice  morality  to  beauty, 
but  that  morality  was  with  him  rather  a  means  than 
an  end  ;  that  as  his  philosophy  is  the  philosophy  of  a 
poet,  so  his  ethics  is  the  ethics  of  a  poet. 

Emerson  seems  himself  to  have  felt  that  poetry 
was  his  vocation.  He  modestly  said,  “I  am  not  a 
great  poet/’  but  he  added,  “  Whatever  is  of  me  is 
a  poet.”  He  wrote  indeed  to  Carlyle:  “I  do  not 
belong  to  the  poets,  but  only  to  a  low  department  of 
literature,  the  reporters,  suburban  men.”  I  do  not 
conceive  that  this  statement  is  in  any  sense  a  contra¬ 
diction  of  the  other.  The  very  self-depreciation  of 
the  phrase  “I  do  not  belong  to  the  poets”  shows  in 
what  direction  his  aspiration  pointed.  It  implies  that 
he  felt  his  place  to  be  among  them,  even  though  he 
did  not  seem  to  himself  strong  enough  to  reach  their 
height. 

His  mental  structure  thus  indicates  that  he  ought 
to  be  a  poet.  His  ambition  and  the  impulse  of  his 
genius  point  in  the  same  direction.  The  question 


226 


ESSAYS 


now  meets  us,  Was  he  a  poet?  To  reach  such 
answer  as  we  may  to  this  question,  we  must  now 
turn  to  the  poems  themselves. 

It  is  impossible  to  explain  the  charm  of  a  poet’s 
verse.  The  crowning  grace,  which  is  the  gift  of 
genius,  like  all  life,  defies  our  analysis.  The  most 
that  we  can  do  is  to  recognize  the  influence  of  cer¬ 
tain  elements  which  contribute  to  the  general  result. 
In  briefly  indicating,  in  advance,  such  elements  in 
the  poetry  of  Emerson,  the  first  that  I  will  name  is 
strength.  It  is  to  put  this  same  quality  in  another 
form  if  we  say  that  there  is  something  in  the  poems 
of  Emerson,  in  the  mingled  grace  and  force,  in  the 
simplicity,  in  the  movement  of  the  lines,  and  in 
the  choice  of  words,  that  reminds  us  of  what  is  best 
in  the  older  English  poetry.  Few  modern  poems 
would  be  found  so  much  in  place  in  a  choice  selec¬ 
tion  from  the  earlier  English  verse.  An  extreme 
example  of  this  relationship  is  found  in  his  habit  of 
making  of  the  terminations  ion ,  iar ,  and  the  like, 
when  they  occur  at  the  end  of  a  line,  two  syllables 
instead  of  one,  as  in  the  following  example  : 

“  I  see  thee  in  the  crowd  alone, 

I  will  be  thy  companion.” 

This  habit  is  not  to  be  commended ;  yet  in  the  case 
of  Emerson  it  is  so  in  keeping  with  his  style  that  it 
does  not  look  like  affectation.  It  seems  as  if  the 
poets  with  whom  he  had  been  familiar  were  in  the 
habit  of  speaking  in  that  way,  and  he  knew  no  other 
form  of  speech  that  a  poet  should  use. 

I  name  as  a  second  characteristic  of  the  poems  of 
Emerson  the  fact  that  in  conjunction  with  this  kin¬ 
ship  with  what  most  charms  us  in  the  older  English 
verse  we  find  the  best  results  of  our  modern  life. 


THE  POEMS  OF  EMERSON 


227 


These  passing  years  have  not  been  in  vain.  They 
have  been  years  of  scientific  investigation  and  theory, 
years  in  which  philosophy  has  striven  to  sound  the 
abyss  of  being,  and  in  which  spiritual  insight,  if  not 
more  clear  and  far-reaching,  is  yet,  in  its  sweep,  more 
broad  than  it  has,  in  general,  been  before.  What 
may  be  called  the  subjective  world  has  been  devel¬ 
oped  more  fully,  and  yet  the  world  of  nature,  in  and 
for  itself,  has  come  to  have  a  peculiar  charm. 

So  far  as  this  spirit  of  our  modern  life  is  concerned 
Emerson  stood  in  the  forefront.  If  not,  in  any  sys¬ 
tematic  sense,  a  student  of  science  or  philosophy,  he 
yet,  so  far  as  the  mental  attitude  is  concerned,  suc¬ 
ceeded  in  somehow  appropriating  the  largest  results 
of  both.  The  most  delicate  shadings  of  the  inner 
life,  and  the  most  fleeting  beauties  of  the  external 
world,  are  given  by  him  with  equal  truth  ;  and  his 
spiritual  life  was  so  lofty  and  pure  that  those  who 
knew  not  what  else  to  call  him  have  spoken  of  him 
as  in  some  special  and  high  sense  a  seer. 

To  the  two  elements  that  have  been  named,  one 
being  the  strength  of  the  old,  and  the  other  the  full¬ 
ness  of  the  new,  must  be  added  a  third,  that,  indeed, 
which  can  alone  give  to  any  poems  the  right  to  be 
so  called  —  I  mean  the  power  of  the  imagination. 
The  intellectual  suggestions  of  the  time  do  not  exist 
as  such  in  these  poems.  Everything  is  fused  and 
shaped  by  the  imagination.  We  do  not  have  a  ker¬ 
nel  of  thought  which  the  imagination  has  wrapt  in  a 
tissue  of  its  own  devising.  The  form  and  the  con¬ 
tent  are  one.  The  imagination  has  re-created  the 
whole,  and  made  it  into  something  of  its  own  sub¬ 
stance,  just  as  the  imagination  of  Shakespeare  re¬ 
created  the  historical  personages  of  his  dramas,  and 


228 


ESSAYS 


made  them  as  truly  its  own  products  as  are  the  char¬ 
acters  with  which  history  has  nothing  to  do. 

If  after  this  general  view  of  the  characteristics  of 
Emerson’s  poems  we  look  at  them  in  more  detail,  we 
must  confess  that  the  strength  of  his  verse  sometimes 
becomes  rudeness.  There  is  sometimes  a  lack  of 
finish  that  jars  upon  the  sensitive  ear.  No  reader 
of  Emerson  can  fail  to  regret  that  his  lines  are  so 
often  marred  by  imperfections.  It  seems  a  pity  that 
some  one  could  not  have  done  for  him  what  he  is  said 
to  have  done  for  Jones  Very,  even  to  the  reminding 
him  that  the  Holy  Ghost  surely  writes  good  gram¬ 
mar.  Dr.  Holmes,  in  his  brilliant  and  sympathetic 
chapter  on  Emerson’s  poems,  gives  a  single  example 
of  what  might  have  been  effected  in  this  way  : 

“  At  morn  or  noon  the  guide  rows  bare-headed.” 

“  It  surely  was  not  difficult  to  say,”  suggests  Dr. 
Holmes  : 

“  At  morn  or  noon,  bare-headed  rows  the  guide.” 

Some  of  Emerson’s  work,  however,  is  not  appre¬ 
ciably  affected  by  such  faults.  The  “Threnody,”  for 
instance,  is  not  without  imperfections,  but  it  over¬ 
powers  these  by  its  great  beauty.  The  “Problem” 
utters  lofty  thought  and  sublime  imagery  in  a  music 
that  is  worthy  of  them.1  Had  Emerson  written  no- 

1  Among  other  poems  in  which  form  and  content  alike  charm  us 
may  be  named  Each  and  All ,  Uriel ,  Good-Bye ,  The  Rhodora,  The 
Humble-Bee ,  The  Snow-Storm,  Monadnoc,  Merlin  /.,  Etienne  de  La 
Boece ,  Forbearance ,  Forerunners ,  Ode  to  Beauty,  To  Eva,  The  Amulet, 
The  Day's  Ration,  Blight,  Dirge,  Concord  Hymn,  and  some  of  the 
introductions  to  the  essays.  There  are  others,  more  open  in  parts 
to  criticism,  in  which  great  poetic  beauty  and  music  of  rhythm  are 
shown,  for  the  sake  of  which  imperfections  may  be  forgotten  or  for¬ 
given.  Among  these  may  be  named  The  World-Soul,  Woodnotes, 
Initial,  Dcemonic  and  Celestial  Love,  Hermione,  and  The  Sphinx. 


THE  POEMS  OF  EMERSON 


229 


thing  else,  his  fame  as  a  poet  might  rest  securely 
on  this.  Like  all  great  poets  he  should  be  judged 
by  his  best  work.  Upon  how  few  of  his  poems  does 
the  fame  of  Wordsworth  rest !  We  read  the  others 
largely  in  the  light  of  these.  The  difference  between 
the  poorer  work  of  Wordsworth  and  that  of  Emer¬ 
son  is  found  in  the  fact  that  when  Wordsworth  falls 
below  his  highest  level,  his  poems,  however  perfect 
in  form,  become  prosaic.  With  Emerson,  however 
imperfect  the  form,  the  content  is  almost  always 
poetical. 

But  though  the  best  work  of  Emerson  is  not  seri¬ 
ously  marred  by  metrical  faults,  the  reader  must  not 
expect  to  find  in  his  poems  any  elaboration  of  form 
for  the  form’s  sake.  If  there  are  those  who  demand 
that  a  poet  must  have  a  mastery  of  various  metres, 
that  in  his  poems  rhyme  and  rhythm  shall  turn  and 
return  upon  themselves,  as  if  in  the  mazes  of  an  in¬ 
tricate  but  harmonious  dance — these  must  deny  to 
Emerson  the  name  of  poet.  Such  mastery  nearly 
all  the  great  poets  possess,  and  it  must  be  confessed 
that  Emerson  has  little  of  it.  Now  and  then  we 
have  a  bit  of  alliteration,  as  in  these  lines  : 

“  Star  adoring  occupied, 

Virtue  cannot  bend  her, 

Just  to  please  a  poet’s  pride, 

To  parade  her  splendor.” 

Such  examples  are  probably  the  result  of  chance 
rather  than  of  purpose,  and  of  other  arts  of  metrical 
composition  there  is  little  trace.  We  find,  further, 
little  of  that  sweet  and  liquid  melody  that  gives  such 

In  the  Earth-Song  and  Terminus  the  very  irregularity  adds  a  charm. 
The  May-Day  has  passages  of  great  beauty.  These  may  serve 
merely  as  examples. 


230 


ESSAYS 


a  charm  to  much  of  the  poetry  of  our  time,  and  which 
the  simple  measures  of  Emerson’s  verse  would  ad¬ 
mit.  Now  and  then  we  have  a  strain  or  two  of  such 
music,  as  when  he  sings  : 

“  Thou  canst  not  wave  thy  staff  in  air, 

Or  dip  thy  paddle  in  the  lake, 

But  it  carves  the  bow  of  beauty  there, 

And  the  ripples  in  rhymes  the  oar  forsake.” 

Such  examples  are,  however,  rare. 

I  would  not  underrate  the  charm  of  an  elaborate 
metrical  structure,  when  it  is  the  work  of  a  master. 
Perhaps  Emerson  cared  too  little  for  mere  form.  He 
says  of  the  bard  : 

“  He  shall  not  his  brain  encumber 
With  the  coil  of  rhythm  and  number.” 

But  Shakespeare  and  Milton  did  not  disdain  to  en¬ 
cumber  their  brains  with  the  coils  of  the  sonnet,  an 
encumbrance  vastly  less,  probably,  in  their  case  than 
it  would  have  been  in  that  of  Emerson.  Yet  it  must 
be  remembered  that  however  beautiful  are  the  son¬ 
nets  of  Shakespeare,  and  however  grand  those  of 
Milton,  each  of  these  poets  achieved  equal  if  not 
greater  triumphs  in  simpler  measures.  If  there  is 
a  charm  in  elaborateness  of  metre  when  it  is  the 
work  of  a  master,  there  is  also  a  charm  in  simplicity 
when  it  is  a  poet  who  sings.  In  the  simpler  struc¬ 
ture  the  beauty  of  spontaneity  may  replace  the 
beauty  of  art.  It  may  have  the  freedom  of  nature, 
and  compare  with  more  artistically  constructed  works 
somewhat  as  wild  flowers  compare  with  the  products 
of  the  conservatory.  We  may  admire  the  one  with¬ 
out  thereby  condemning  the  other.  This  comparison, 
obviously,  applies  only  to  the  form.  The  simpler 
poems  may  represent  a  mental  and  spiritual  training 


THE  POEMS  OF  EMERSON 


23 1 


that  is  careful  and  complete.  One  of  the  things  that 
charm  us  in  the  poems  of  Emerson  is  to  find  a  man 
who  is  the  product,  in  a  special  sense,  of  the  best  cul¬ 
ture  of  our  civilization  singing  with  a  free  spontaneity, 
as  if  the  elaboration  of  metres  had  not  yet  been  in¬ 
vented. 

I  would  not  speak  slightingly  of  the  wonderful 
charm  of  that  melodious  flow,  to  which,  as  we  have 
seen,  the  poems  of  Emerson  can  rarely  lay  claim. 
At  the  same  time  we  must  recognize  the  fact  that 
there  is  a  music  of  strength  as  well  as  of  sweetness, 
and  to  this  Emerson  aspired.  Thus  he  sings  : 

“  No  jingling  serenader’s  art 
N  or  tinkle  of  piano  strings 

Can  make  the  wild  blood  start 
In  its  mystic  springs. 

The  kingly  bard 

Must  smite  the  chords  rudely  and  hard, 

As  with  hammer  or  with  mace.” 

The  element  of  strength  in  Emerson’s  poetry  is 
displayed  in  the  movement  of  the  lines,  in  simplicity 
of  speech,  in  the  preference  for  homely  words,  though 
the  more  ornate  have  their  proper  place,  in  the  fact 
that,  in  general,  every  word  tells,  and  every  word  is  so 
chosen  as  to  express  just  the  shade  of  meaning  re¬ 
quired.  With  this  mastery  of  words  goes  the  insight 
without  which  no  great  result  can  be  accomplished  ; 
just  as,  in  the  case  of  the  archer,  accuracy  of  sight 
is  no  less  essential  than  obedience  of  hand. 

As  a  single  example  in  which  these  qualities  are 
united,  take  the  following  lines  from  the  “  Each  and 
All 

“  Over  me  soared  the  eternal  sky, 

Full  of  light  and  of  Deity.” 

What  words  could  so  well  express  the  sky’s  retreat- 


232 


ESSAYS 


ing  height,  its  solemnity,  and  its  glory  !  The  depth 
of  the  insight  may  be  seen  from  the  fact  that,  as  a 
friend  1  once  suggested  to  me,  in  bringing  together 
light  and  the  Deity,  as  having  a  common  manifesta¬ 
tion  in  the  heavens,  the  poem  expresses  precisely  the 
sense  from  which  sprang  what  was  highest  and  most 
essential  in  the  early  Aryan  religion.  This  charac¬ 
teristic  may  be  further  illustrated  by  the  condensed 
and  almost  epigrammatic  strength  of  many  expres¬ 
sions.  There  are  not  a  few  lines  or  couplets  that, 
were  Emerson  a  more  popular  poet,  would  have  passed 
into  the  common  speech  as  proverbs.  A  few  such 
expressions  are  : 

“  Beauty  is  its  own  excuse  for  being.” 

“  He  builded  better  than  he  knew.” 

“  Things  are  in  the  saddle 
And  ride  mankind.” 

“  The  silent  organ  loudest  chants 
The  Master’s  requiem.” 

“  When  half-gods  go 
The  gods  arrive.” 

“  The  traveler  and  the  road  seem  one 
With  the  journey  to  be  done.” 

Not  a  few  such  lines  have  become  proverbs  on  the 
lips  of  the  lovers  of  Emerson  ;  while  one  or  two,  at 
least,  are  not  strangers  to  the  columns  of  the  daily 
press. 

If  we  take  passages  that  are  a  little  longer  we  find 
many  perfect  pictures  painted  with  a  few  strong 

1  Professor  William  G.  Hale,  of  Cornell  (now  of  Chicago),  who  has 
since,  I  believe,  expressed  the  thought  more  publicly. 


THE  POEMS  OF  EMERSON 


233 


touches.  The  poem  called  “Each  and  All  ”  is  a  series 
of  such  pictures.  Without  multiplying  examples,  the 
following  from  “The  World-Soul”  may  be  quoted  for 
its  beauty  and  its  large  suggestion  : 

“  Yon  ridge  of  purple  landscape, 

Y on  sky  between  the  walls, 

Hold  all  the  hidden  wonders 
In  scanty  intervals.” 

It  will  be  hard,  I  think,  to  find  in  any  poet  a  con¬ 
densed  description  so  large  and  picturesque  as  that  in 
the  first  of  these  lines.  Form  and  color  and  stretch 
are  all  there,  while  the  whole  passage  is  profound  in 
its  suggestions.  It  is  this  quality  in  the  poems  of 
Emerson  that  makes  him  one  of  the  most  quotable 
of  poets.  His  words  spring  to  our  lips,  taking  us 
almost  unawares. 

When  I  said  that  many  of  the  pithy  lines  and 
couplets  of  Emerson’s  poems  would  become  proverbs 
if  the  poems  were  only  popular,  it  may  have  appeared 
to  some  that  in  the  admission  that  the  poems  are  not 
popular  their  final  condemnation  had  been  uttered. 
The  truest  poetry,  it  is  sometimes  assumed,  must 
possess  that  large  human  element  which  permits  men 
of  all  grades  of  culture  to  find  something  in  it  for 
themselves.  This  assumption  contains  a  certain 
amount  of  truth,  but  a  truth  that  has  very  narrow 
limits.  One  must  have  a  certain  grade  of  culture,  or 
must  be  born  with  an  insight  that  is  the  equivalent 
of  this,  to  enjoy  even  Shakespeare.  A  work  may  be 
thoroughly  human  and  of  the  highest  genius,  and  at 
the  same  time  require  some  special  fitness  or  disci¬ 
pline  for  its  comprehension. 

Many  find  the  poems  of  Emerson  obscure.  This 
obscurity  results  very  largely  from  their  strength. 


234 


ESSAYS 


So  far  as  the  content  of  the  poems  is  concerned, 
this  consists  of  the  thoughts  and  images  that  would 
present  themselves  to  a  poetic  nature  that  had  caught 
the  fullest  intellectual  and  spiritual  impulse  of  his 
time.  To  the  comprehension  of  these  the  poet,  if 
he  be  indeed  such,  can  furnish  little  help.  If  he 
utters  a  thought  it  is  not  simply  as  a  thought  that 
he  utters  it.  As  we  have  seen,  the  ideas  in  the 
poetry  of  Emerson  rarely  present  themselves  except 
as  creations  of  the  imagination.  In  other  words,  the 
poet  deals  with  pictures.  If  one  recognizes  what  is 
placed  before  him,  well  and  good  ;  if  he  does  not,  he 
must  study  it  out  for  himself.  Emerson  speaks  in 
one  case  of  “leopard-colored  rills.”  When  I  first 
read  these  poems  in  my  youth,  I  remember  that  I  was 
troubled  with  this  phrase.  I  had  never  seen  enough, 
or  had  never  observed  enough,  to  recognize  the  beauty 
and  truth  of  the  epithet.  I  could  only  wait  till  the 
thing  recalled  the  words.  If  Emerson  had  supposed 
that  any  reader  would  not  recognize  the  meaning,  he 
could  have  explained  it  and  told  how  the  effect  was 
produced.  He  could  have  said  that,  given  a  bottom 
of  reddish  sand  with  shadows  or  ripples  playing  over 
it,  we  should  have  something  that  might  suggest 
the  skin  of  a  leopard ;  but  in  this  case  we  should 
have  an  approach  to  prose.  So  if  Emerson  had  ex¬ 
plained  the  spiritual  imagery  of  his  poems,  he  might 
have  made  them  more  clear,  but  with  a  like  defect. 
It  is  the  province  of  the  imagination  to  gather  up 
into  single  living  forms  whatever  is  offered  to  its 
view.  The  horizon  will  vary  according  to  the  posi¬ 
tion  or  the  insight  of  the  poet.  If  what  it  presents 
be  familiar,  all  will  recognize  and  comprehend ;  so 
far  as  it  is  less  familiar,  there  will  be  obscurity.  The 


THE  POEMS  OF  EMERSON 


235 


question  to  ask  in  this  latter  case  is  whether  the 
thought  of  the  poet  is  fantastic  or  fanciful  ;  that  is, 
whether  it  is  his  private  thought,  or,  on  the  other 
hand,  whether  it  lies  in  the  pathway  of  the  race.  If 
when  we  reach  it  we  find  it  human  and  normal,  then 
it  is  not  the  fault  of  the  poet,  but  to  his  praise,  that 
we  have  found  it  at  first  obscure.  It  is,  I  repeat, 
because  he  is  a  poet  that  he  appeals  not  directly  to 
the  understanding  but  to  the  imagination  of  the 
reader,  which  he  assumes  to  be  in  harmony  with  his 
own.  Even  the  essays  of  Emerson  were  at  first 
found  obscure.  One  writer  compared  the  reading  of 
them  to  the  making  one’s  way  through  a  swamp. 
You  put  your  foot  upon  some  little  hummock  that 
bears  its  weight,  and  then  look  about  you  to  find  a 
resting-place  for  the  next  step.  Rarely  now  are  his 
essays  found  obscure.  Indeed,  we  can  scarcely 
understand  to-day  the  difficulty  that  beset  their  first 
reading.  The  difference  is  that  at  the  time  the  style 
and  the  range  of  the  thought  were  new.  Now,  thanks 
largely  to  Emerson  himself,  they  have  become  famil¬ 
iar.  In  the  poetry  the  difficulty  is  greater,  partly 
because  the  thought  is  higher  and  subtler ;  partly 
because,  as  has  just  been  observed,  poetry  appeals  to 
the  imagination  rather  than  to  the  understanding. 
To  this  it  must  be  added  that  because  the  style  of 
Emerson  is  so  strong  and  epigrammatic  the  thought 
is  doubly  barred.  So  far  as  the  expression  is  con¬ 
cerned,  we  must  pronounce  our  judgment,  not  accord¬ 
ing  to  the  degree  of  the  difficulty  in  comprehending, 
but  according  to  the  fitness  of  the  expression  as  felt 
when  comprehension  has  been  reached.  It  will  often 
be  found,  when  the  meaning  flashes  upon  the  mind, 
that  the  very  difficulty  is  the  beauty  of  the  phrase. 


236 


ESSAYS 


It  may  be  said  that  without  formal  explanation  a 
truer  artist  might  so  have  arranged  his  materials  that 
the  way  to  the  comprehension  of  the  thought  would 
have  been  prepared.  If  we  apply  the  test  just  sug¬ 
gested,  I  think  it  will  be  seen  that  in  this  case  we 
should  have  more  diffuseness  and  less  strength. 
Comprehension  would  be  easier ;  but  the  effect, 
when  comprehension  was  reached,  would  be  less 
marked.  In  some  cases  this  effect  may  be  purchased 
at  too  great  a  cost,  but  the  general  rule  still  remains 
true  :  the  greater  the  difficulty  the  greater  the  reward. 

So  far  as  obscurity  may  be  due  to  carelessness  of 
structure,  so  far  it  is  a  fault.  This  may  sometimes 
be  the  case  with  Emerson ;  but  in  general  the  diffi¬ 
culty,  I  conceive,  arises  from  the  elements  indicated 
above,  and  if  there  be  a  fault  it  is  the  excess  of 
strength.  At  the  same  time,  I  must  say  that  I  speak 
of  these  difficulties  rather  from  hearsay  than  from 
very  much  personal  experience. 

It  should  be  noted,  in  this  connection,  that  some¬ 
thing  of  the  abstractness  that  is  found  by  some  in 
the  poems  of  Emerson  may  result  from  the  charac¬ 
teristics  that  have  just  been  referred  to.  If  one 
translates  from  the  language  of  imagination  into  that 
of  the  understanding,  what  was  originally  the  soul  of 
a  form  becomes  an  abstract  thought  ;  just  as  the 
motif  may  be  extracted  from  a  drama  and  considered 
by  itself  as  a  proposition  of  the  understanding.  If  the 
reader  does  not  reconstruct  the  poem  with  a  power 
akin  to  that  by  which  the  poet  at  first  constructed 
it,  the  two  elements  remain  over  against  one  another 
in  the  thought,  and  the  poetry  has  become  prose. 

This  whole  matter  can  be  best  made  clear  by  an 
example.  In  the  “  Ode  to  Beauty  ”  we  read  : 


THE  POEMS  OF  EMERSON 


237 


"  Guest  of  million  painted  forms, 

Which  in  turn  thy  glory  warms  ! 

The  frailest  leaf,  the  mossy  bark, 

The  acorn’s  cup,  the  raindrop’s  arc, 

The  swinging  spider’s  silver  line, 

The  ruby  of  the  drop  of  wine, 

The  shining  pebble  of  the  pond, 

Thou  inscribest  with  a  bond, 

In  thy  momentary  play, 

Would  bankrupt  nature  to  repay.” 

These  lines  may,  by  some,  be  considered  obscure. 
To  find  the  source  of  the  obscurity,  if  it  exists,  let  us 
compare  them  with  a  short  poem  by  Tennyson,  that 
deals  with  a  somewhat  similar  theme.  No  one,  I 
trust,  will  suppose  that  I  am  here  comparing  Emer¬ 
son  and  Tennyson  as  poets.  I  wish  merely  to  show 
by  these  two  bits  of  composition  that  the  obscurity 
in  Emerson’s  poems  sometimes  results  from  the 
strength  of  his  imagination ;  that  is,  from  the  fact 
that  they  are  so  truly  and  wholly  poems. 

The  poem  of  Tennyson  is  as  follows  : 

“  Flower  in  the  crannied  wall, 

I  pluck  you  out  of  the  crannies  ; 

Hold  you  here,  root  and  all  in  my  hand. 

Little  flower,  but  if  I  could  understand 
What  you  are,  root  and  all  and  all  in  all, 

I  should  know  what  God  and  man  is.” 

The  lines  of  Tennyson  form  a  charming  little 
poem.  The  “flower  in  the  crannied  wall”  is  in 
itself  a  pretty  picture,  while  the  slightly  dramatic 
form,  the  hint  of  a  personification  in  the  fact  that  the 
poem  is  not  merely  about  the  flower,  but  is  addressed 
to  it,  adds  to  the  charm.  The  personification  is  all 
the  sweeter  because  it  is  that  of  the  heart  and  the 
imagination  alone,  without  the  distinct  recognition  of 
the  intellect,  so  that  it  affects  our  attitude  towards 


238 


ESSAYS 


the  flower  rather  than  the  flower  itself.  But  when  the 
poem  comes  to  utter  the  thought  that  is  in  it,  then 
it  is  pure  prose.  If  I  could  understand,  says  the 
poet  to  the  flower,  what  you  are,  I  should  know 
what  God  and  man  are.  It  is  all  obviously  a  pure 
matter  of  the  understanding,  and  it  is  therefore  clear. 
Any  one  that  is  familiar  with  the  great  thought  of 
the  interdependence  of  all  things,  sees  in  a  moment 
what  is  in  the  poet’s  mind.  One  who  has  not  this 
thought  is  put  in  the  way  of  acquiring  it. 

If  the  lines  of  Emerson  are  obscure  to  some  to 
whom  those  of  Tennyson  are  clear,  the  reason  is  that 
they  appeal  directly  to  the  imagination.  It  is  not 
merely  that  Emerson  uses  a  metaphor,  which  the 
lines  of  Tennyson  lack.  Behind  and  in  the  metaphor 
is  felt  the  presence  of  the  thing  itself,  while  the 
other  poem  deals  merely  with  the  knowing  about  the 
thing.  The  poem  of  Tennyson  might  serve  in  some 
respects  as  an  introduction  to  the  lines  of  Emerson  ; 
for  it  is  easy  to  see  that  if  through  understanding 
the  flower  one  could  understand  all  nature,  then  all 
nature  would  be  implied  by  the  flower,  and  if  all  that 
is  implied  by  the  flower  were  demanded  of  nature, 
all  that  she  has  would  be  taken. 

But  Tennyson  goes  so  far  as  to  say  that  if  we 
understood  the  flower,  we  should  know  what  God  is. 
God,  then,  is  in  the  bond  that  is  inscribed  in  the 
flower.  God  is  beyond  the  realm  of  nature.  Nature 
then  would  not  only  be  exhausted,  she  would  be  bank¬ 
rupt. 

Perhaps,  having  reached  the  meaning  of  the  lines 
in  this  roundabout  way,  the  reader  might  call  them 
abstract,  whereas  if  he  would  let  them  flash  upon 
him  in  their  simple  unity  he  would  see  that  what  had 


THE  POEMS  OF  EMERSON 


239 


troubled  him  was  not  their  abstractness  but  their  con¬ 
creteness.  It  is  the  statement  of  Tennyson  that  is 
abstract ;  that  of  Emerson  is  concrete  with  all  the 
vividness  of  the  imagination. 

We  have  not  yet  reached  the  full  meaning  of  the 
lines  of  Emerson.  They  have  a  further  claim  to  a 
preeminence,  so  far  as  the  imagination  is  concerned, 
in  that  they  emphasize  the  element  of  beauty.  It  is 
this  that  has  written  the  bond  upon,  let  us  say,  the 
flower.  This  element  would  of  course  be  included 
in  the  statement  of  Tennyson,  but  the  reader  is  left 
to  supply  it  for  himself.  Let  us  now  compare  the 
lines  of  Emerson  with  a  passage  from  his  prose 
which  touches  upon  the  same  theme.  In  this,  be¬ 
cause  it  is  prose,  Emerson  attempts  to  make  the 
matter  clear.  Even  in  his  prose,  however,  he  can 
rarely  address  himself  directly  to  the  understanding ; 
so  possibly  his  prose  may  not  be  quite  so  clear  as 
Tennyson’s  verse.  The  extract  is  as  follows  :  “The 
new  virtue  which  constitutes  a  thing  beautiful  is  a 
certain  cosmical  quality,  or  a  power  to  suggest  rela¬ 
tion  to  the  whole  world,  and  so  lift  the  object  out  of 
a  pitiful  individuality.  Every  natural  feature  —  sea, 
sky,  rainbow,  flowers,  musical  tone  —  has  in  it  some¬ 
what  which  is  not  private  but  universal,  speaks  of 
that  central  benefit  which  is  in  the  soul  of  nature, 
and  thereby  is  beautiful.”  In  this  extract  he  speaks 
of  a  certain  universal  element  in  beauty,  and  this 
throws  light  upon  the  poem.  This  hint  the  poem 
could  not  give,  simply  because  it  is  a  poem. 

There  is  another  element  hinted  at  in  the  prose 
extract  that  might  furnish  a  more  profound  explana¬ 
tion.  The  reference  to  “  that  central  benefit  that  is 
in  the  soul  of  nature”  might  suggest  what  seems  to 


240 


ESSAYS 


me  the  truth,  that  beauty  represents  in  a  special 
manner  that  supernatural  element  which  is  behind 
and  through  all  nature,  which,  however,  nature  does 
not  hold,  so  that  as  we  have  already  seen,  she  would 
become  bankrupt  if  it  were  required  of  her. 

It  is  obvious  that  in  all  this  there  is  nothing  far¬ 
fetched  or  fantastic.  In  the  expression,  also,  there 
is  no  obscurity  or  indirectness.  The  whole  is  a  pro¬ 
duct  of  the  imagination,  as  natural  and  real  as  those 
creations  which  move  upon  some  lower  plane. 

We  may  compare  also  with  the  poem  of  Tennyson, 
as  dealing  with  the  same  theme,  the  flash  of  poetry 
in  Emerson’s  lines  : 

“  Who  telleth  one  of  my  meanings 
Is  master  of  all  I  am.” 

We  must  not  forget  that  if  the  concreteness  of  the 
imagination  is  an  element  of  obscurity  in  unfamiliar 
regions  of  thought,  it  becomes  luminous  in  regions 
that  lie  to  a  larger  extent  within  the  ordinary  reach 
of  the  mind  that  is  to  be  affected.  What  light  does 
a  happy  metaphor  throw  upon  some  confused  maze 
of  speculation  !  The  poet  may,  further,  have  a  cer¬ 
tain  freedom  and  directness  that  come  to  him  because 
he  appeals  to  the  insight  and  not  to  the  understand¬ 
ing  of  men.  This  fact  the  poems  of  Emerson  also 
illustrate.  One  may  read  his  essays  and  lectures 
and  be  uncertain  as  to  his  position  in  regard  to  the 
great  questions  of  human  life  and  destiny.  How 
often  has  it  been  asked  whether  he  was  a  theist  or  a 
pantheist,  and  whether  he  believed  in  immortality ! 
In  his  prose  writings  he  speaks  cautiously,  for  in  his 
aphoristic  manner  he  is  on  the  whole  not  free  from 
a  certain  sense  of  duty  to  the  understanding,  and  he 
perhaps  shrinks  somewhat  from  making  statements 


THE  POEMS  OF  EMERSON 


241 


which  might  need  qualification  and  justification.  In 
his  poetry,  at  least,  he  is  free  from  even  a  hint  of 
this  bondage.  Thus  we  find  clear  and  ringing  affir¬ 
mations  which  are  the  utterances  of  his  inner  life. 
In  a  grand  passage  in  the  “  Woodnotes  ”  he  cries  : 

“  And  conscious  Law  is  King  of  kings.” 

If  one  demands  his  creed,  here  it  is.  In  the  loftiest 
of  all  his  poems,  the  “  Threnody,”  he  utters  him¬ 
self  yet  more  freely.  His  heart  was  wrung  by  sor¬ 
row,  and  yet  was  inspired  by  the  fire  at  once  of  faith 
and  of  genius.  I  used  the  word  “  faith  ”  as  suggested 
by  our  common  speech  ;  but  the  spirit  of  Emerson 
had  risen  above  the  region  of  faith  and  had  entered 
that  of  insight : 

“  Past  utterance  and  past  belief 

And  past  the  blasphemy  of  grief.” 

Here  he  tells  us,  in  one  of  those  condensed  and 
almost  epigrammatic  utterances  of  which  I  have 
spoken  : 

.  .  .  “  What  is  excellent, 

As  God  lives,  is  permanent ; 

Hearts  are  dust,  hearts'  loves  remain  ; 

Heart’s  love  will  meet  thee  again.” 

A  striking  illustration  of  the  imaginative  power  of 
Emerson  is  found  in  the  poem  called  “  Uriel.”  I 
confess  to  having  been  somewhat  startled  when  Dr. 
Hedge  suggested  to  me  that  this  poem  probably 
grew  out  of  the  discussions  between  conservatives 
and  radicals  in  the  Boston  Association  of  Ministers. 
The  thought  that  caused  the  banishment  of  Uriel  — 

“  Line  in  nature  is  not  found  ”  — 

was  one  not  infrequently  expressed  by  this  early 
radicalism.  At  first  this  explanation  seems  some- 


242 


ESSAYS 


what  to  cheapen  the  poem,  but  the  more  we  study  it 
the  more  do  we  find  that  it  heightens  our  admira¬ 
tion.  The  thought  that  there  is  no  straight  line  in 
nature,  that  the  finite,  pushed  beyond  a  certain  limit, 
tends  to  pass  into  something  different  from  itself,  is 
one  that  seems  at  first  sight  to  unsettle  all  the 
boundaries  of  life  and  speculation.  It  was  something 
like  this  which  caused  the  Darwinian  theory  to  be 
received  with  horror  by  men  of  science,  no  less  than 
by  theologians.  All  limits  and  classifications  seemed 
upset.  Emerson  saw  the  immense  sweep  of  this 
principle,  as  well  in  the  upheaval  that  it  would  cost 
as  in  its  positive  results,  and  taking  it  out  of  the 
limits  of  a  local  and  temporary  discussion,  he  em¬ 
bodied  it  in  a  poem  that  seems  to  take  its  place 
among  the  sacred  myths  of  the  past : 

“  As  Uriel  spoke,  with  piercing  eye, 

A  shudder  ran  around  the  sky ; 

The  stern  old  war-gods  shook  their  heads, 

The  seraphs  frowned  from  myrtle-beds. 

Seemed  to  the  holy  festival 
The  rash  word  boded  ill  to  all ; 

The  balance-beam  of  Fate  was  bent ; 

The  bounds  of  good  and  ill  were  rent ; 

Strong  Hades  could  not  keep  his  own, 

But  all  slid  to  confusion.” 

The  notion  that  the  poems  of  Emerson  lack  passion 
is  as  wide  of  the  mark  as  the  complaint  that  they  are 
abstract.  We  have,  indeed,  few  poems  suggested  by 
personal  relations,  but  of  these,  two,  at  least,  are  of 
great  power  and  beauty.  One  is  the  poem  suggested 
by  the  death  of  his  brothers,  entitled  “  A  Dirge ;  ” 
the  other  was  inspired  by  the  death  of  his  son,  and 
called  “Threnody.”  It  must  be  admitted  that  per¬ 
sonal  relations  were  of  less  account  in  the  thought 


THE  POEMS  OF  EMERSON 


243 


of  Emerson  than  in  that  of  most  of  those  who  pos¬ 
sess  his  tenderness  of  spirit.  The  closest  ties  were 
regarded  as  a  preparation  for  something  higher. 
“There  are,”  he  tells  us,  “moments  when  the  affec¬ 
tions  rule  and  absorb  the  man,  and  make  his  happi¬ 
ness  dependent  on  a  person  or  persons.  But  in 
health  the  mind  is  presently  seen  again,  its  overarch¬ 
ing  vault  bright  with  galaxies  of  immutable  lights, 
and  the  warm  loves  and  fears  that  swept  over  us  as 
clouds  must  lose  their  finite  character  and  blend  with 
God  to  attain  their  own  perfection.  But  we  need 
not  fear  that  we  can  lose  anything  by  the  progress 
of  the  soul.  The  soul  may  be  trusted  to  the  end. 
That  which  is  so  beautiful  and  attractive  as  these 
relations  must  be  succeeded  and  supplanted  only  by 
what  is  more  beautiful,  and  so  on  forever.” 

This  quotation  suggests,  what  we  feel  to  be  true  in 
reading  so  many  of  Emerson’s  poems,  that  there  is  . 
another,  if  not  a  higher,  passion  than  the  personal. 
Wordsworth  has  taught  us  that  there  is  a  passion  for 
nature  at  least  as  strong  as  that  by  which  one  person 
is  bound  to  another.  Emerson  had  a  passion  for 
beauty,  under  whatever  form  it  might  be  found.  He 
had  a  passion  for  the  ideal,  which  presented  itself  to 
him,  not  as  some  barren  and  inaccessible  peak,  out 
warm  with  the  shapes  and  hues  of  the  imagination. 
In  the  “  Threnody  ”  the  personal  passion  and  the  pas¬ 
sion  for  the  ideal  are  found  engaged  in  a  mighty 
struggle.  The  personal  passion  would  drag  him  down 
into  the  gloom  and  despair  of  a  great  grief.  Where  is 
sorrow  expressed  with  more  intensity  of  feeling  ? 
Where  is  the  revolt  against  the  mighty  power  from 
which  this  sorrow  had  come  uttered  with  more  terrible 
intensity  ? 


244 


ESSAYS 


“  There ’s  not  a  blade  of  autumn  grain 
Which  the  four  seasons  do  not  tend 
And  tides  of  life  and  increase  lend  ; 

And  every  chick  of  every  bird, 

And  weed  and  rock-moss,  is  preferred. 

O  ostrich-like  forgetfulness  ! 

O  loss  of  larger  in  the  less  ! 

Was  there  no  star  that  could  be  sent, 

No  watcher  in  the  firmament, 

No  angel  from  the  countless  host 
That  loiters  round  the  crystal  coast 
Could  stoop  to  heal  that  only  child, 

Nature’s  sweet  marvel  undefiled, 

And  keep  the  blossom  of  the  earth, 

Which  all  her  harvests  were  not  worth  ?  ” 

But  a  grander  passion  is  awakened,  that  which,  for 
the  lack  of  a  better  name,  I  have  called  the  passion 
for  the  ideal.  Its  strength  and  its  reality  are  shown 
by  the  fact  that  the  personal  passion  is  overpowered 
by  it  : 

“  Revere  the  Maker  ;  fetch  thine  eye 
Up  to  his  style  and  manners  of  the  sky, 

Not  of  adamant  and  gold 
Built  he  heaven  stark  and  cold; 

No,  but  a  nest  of  bending  reeds, 

Flowering  grass  and  scented  weeds  ; 

Or  like  a  traveler’s  fleeing  tent, 

Or  bow  above  the  tempest  bent; 

Built  of  tears  and  sacred  flames, 

And  virtue  reaching  to  its  aims ; 

Built  of  furtherance  and  pursuing, 

Not  of  spent  deeds,  but  of  doing. 

Silent  rushes  the  swift  Lord 
Through  ruined  systems  still  restored, 

Broadsowing,  bleak  and  void  to  bless, 

Plants  with  worlds  the  wilderness  ; 

Waters  with  tears  of  ancient  sorrow 
Apples  of  Eden  ripe  to-morrow. 

House  and  tenant  go  to  ground, 

Lost  in  God,  in  Godhead  found.” 

We  have  in  these  lines  the  supreme  manifestation 


THE  POEMS  OF  EMERSON 


245 


of  that  passion  for  the  ideal  which  in  various  forms 
inspires  so  many  of  the  poems  of  Emerson,  and  is 
perhaps  their  most  marked  characteristic.  We  have 
also  an  illustration  of  the  fact  that  however  high  his 
thought  may  soar,  it  never  passes  beyond  the  warm 
and  life-giving  atmosphere  of  the  imagination. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  strength,  the  imagination, 
and  the  passion  manifested  in  the  poems  of  Emerson. 
One  further  mark  of  a  great  poet  is  a  certain  catho¬ 
licity.  Such  a  poet  sings  not  one  emotion  alone,  and 
is  moved  by  no  single  aspect  of  the  world.  This 
catholicity  is  preeminently  the  quality  of  these  poems. 
Where  could  we  find  a  more  solemn  gloom  than  in  the 
“Earth-Song”?  Where  lines  more  steeped  in  sun¬ 
shine  than  the  “Humble-Bee  ”  ?  Sometimes  we  have 
the  simplest  and  most  realistic  picturing  of  nature,  as 
in  the  “Snow-Storm.”  Sometimes  is  placed  before 
us  the  dependence  of  nature  on  our  moods  : 

“  Stars  flamed  and  faded  as  they  bade.” 

More  often,  perhaps,  the  spiritual  interpretation  of 
nature  is  given  us.  Who  has  interpreted  so  sweetly 
the  music  of  the  pines,  who  so  sublimely  the  silence 
of  the  hills  ?  Sometimes  we  have  opened  before  us 
all  that  is  darkest  in  human  life.  A  while  ago  a 
critic  in  one  of  our  reviews  condemned  a  preacher  for 
the  blackness  in  which  he  had  draped  human  nature. 
The  burden  of  the  charge  was  that  the  preacher  had 
introduced  into  a  sermon  the  following  quotation : 

“  But  man  crouches  and  blushes, 

Absconds  and  conceals  ; 

He  creepeth  and  peepeth, 

He  palters  and  steals  ; 

Infirm,  melancholy, 

Jealous  glancing  around, 

An  oaf,  an  accomplice, 

He  poisons  the  ground.” 


246 


ESSAYS 


The  critic  seems  not  to  have  suspected  that  he  had 
to  do  with  the  representative  optimist  of  the  age, 
behind  whom  the  preacher  had  shrewdly  entrenched 
himself.  Elsewhere  we  find  expressed  with  wonder¬ 
ful  power  the  sad  ennui  which  is  felt  so  profoundly 
by  many  souls  even  in  this  age  of  life  and  eagerness, 
an  ennui  so  deep  that  life, 

“  Even  in  the  hot  Dursnit  of  the  best  aims 

X 

And  prizes  of  ambition,  checks  its  hands, 

Like  Alpine  cataracts  frozen  as  they  leaped, 

Chilled  with  a  miserly  compassion 

Of  the  toy’s  purchase  with  the  length  of  life.” 

At  another  time,  in  the  charming  poem  called  “  The 
Day’s  Ration,”  he  sings  of  the  embarrassment  of 
riches  ;  the  day  is  crowded  with  goods,  but  our  little 
cup  is  so  soon  filled  and  all  that  remains  is  lost.  Most 
often  his  song  is  one  of  hope  and  courage.  It  is  the 
voice  of  a  spirit  all  the  more  confident  in  its  optimism, 
because  it  had  been  bold  enough  to  gaze  down  into 
the  darkest  chasms  of  life.  Perhaps  no  poem  is 
more  characteristic  of  Emerson,  of  the  breadth  of  his 
sympathies  and  of  his  independence,  than  “The 
Problem.”  In  this  is  uttered,  as  I  believe  nowhere 
else,  the  sacredness  and  the  inspiration  of  temple 
and  ritual  : 

“  These  temples  grew  as  grows  the  grass, 

Art  might  obey  but  not  surpass. 

The  passive  master  lent  his  hand 
To  the  vast  soul  that  o’er  him  planned, 

And  the  same  power  that  reared  the  shrine 
Bestrode  the  tribes  that  knelt  therein.” 

Yet,  for  himself,  he  could  not  be  one  of  the  minis- 
trants  at  the  sacred  shrine.  Perhaps  the  problem 
was  one  that  he  could  not  himself  answer  : 

“  Why  should  the  vest  on  him  allure 
That  I  could  not  on  me  endure  ?  ” 


THE  POEMS  OF  EMERSON 


247 


To  illustrate  the  catholicity  of  Emerson’s  poetry 
we  should,  however,  be  forced  to  name  nearly  all  of 
his  more  finished  poems.  Each  one  stands  distinct 
from  all  the  rest.  Few  of  them  could  be  confounded 
with  the  work  of  any  other  poet,  not  from  any  trick 
of  manner,  but  from  a  certain  fineness  of  touch  and 
depth  of  vision,  from  a  mingled  delicacy  and  strength 
—  in  a  word,  from  that  mysterious  something  which 
we  can  feel  in  the  work  of  any  great  master,  even 
though  we  may  not  be  able  to  express  it. 

It  is  related,  I  know  not  how  truly,  of  a  distin¬ 
guished  teacher  of  mathematics,  that  when  a  student 
brought  to  him  some  passage  in  the  text-book  for 
explanation,  he  would  simply  read  the  statement 
slowly  to  the  student,  and  then,  without  adding  a 
word,  look  him  full  in  the  face.  That  is,  after  all, 
the  only  way  in  which  one  can  justify  a  poet’s  claim 
to  the  title.  One  can  only  bring  forward  the  verses 
themselves  and  await  the  response.  Gladly  would 
I  thus  introduce,  on  these  pages,  one  and  another 
of  these  poems  that  have  such  a  nameless  charm.  I 
have,  however,  space  but  for  a  single  specimen,  which 
I  must  leave  to  speak  for  itself.  It  is  entitled 

DAYS. 

“  Daughters  of  Time  the  hypocritic  Days, 

Muffled  and  dumb  like  barefoot  dervishes, 

And  marching  single  in  an  endless  file. 

Bring  diadems  and  fagots  in  their  hands. 

To  each  they  offer  gifts  after  his  will, 

Bread,  kingdoms,  stars  and  sky  that  holds  them  all. 

I,  in  my  pleached  garden,  watched  the  pomp, 

Forgot  my  morning  wishes,  hastily 
Took  a  few  herbs  and  apples,  and  the  Day 
Turned  and  departed  silent.  I,  too  late, 

Under  her  solemn  fillet,  saw  the  scorn.” 


X 


THE  “FAUST”  OF  GOETHE 

Probably  no  literary  work  of  modern  times,  unless 
we  except  “The  Divine  Comedy  ”  of  Dante,  has  been 
the  object  of  so  much  commentary  as  the  “  Faust  ”  of 
Goethe.  Much  of  this  critical  work  is  worse  than 
worthless.  Goethe  is  said  to  have  had  as  he  grew 
older  a  love  of  mystification.  If  that  was  a  fault,  it 
has  been  well  punished  by  the  contradictory  and 
absurd  ideas  that  have  been  put  forward  as  to  the 
meaning  of  his  greatest  poem.  Some  of  the  com¬ 
mentaries  on  the  “  Faust  ”  are  of  a  very  different  na¬ 
ture,  and  have  really  helped  the  comprehension  of 
the  work.1  Even  the  best  critics  have,  however, 
sometimes  failed  in  insight,  or  have  followed  some 
clue  that  promised  guidance  to  the  heart  of  the  mys¬ 
tery,  but  has  really  led  astray.  The  student  of  Goethe 
may  feel  that  the  last  word  on  the  “  Faust  ”  has  not 
yet  been  spoken,  and  be  inspired  by  the  hope  of  con¬ 
tributing  something  to  the  general  result. 

The  work  richly  deserves  such  study,  from  what¬ 
ever  point  of  view  it  may  be  regarded.  For  mere 
literary  merit,  for  poetic  beauty  apart  from  any  other 

1  Of  the  many  works  upon  the  Faust  which  I  have  read,  the  most 
important  and  interesting  appear  to  me  to  be  Kuno  Fischer’s 
Goethe's  Faust  (Stuttgart,  1887)  and  Friedrich  Vischer’s  Goethe's 
Faust  (Stuttgart,  without  date).  The  Vorwort  is  dated  1875. 
the  following  essay  I  shall  refer  to  certain  positions  taken  by  these 
writers  with  which  I  cannot  agree. 


THE  “FAUST”  OF  GOETHE 


249 


consideration,  it  is  one  of  the  great  masterpieces  of 
the  world.  It  is  the  only  dramatic  work  of  modern 
times  which  can  reasonably  be  put  in  the  same  rank 
with  the  dramas  of  Shakespeare.  Goethe,  in  general, 
is  not  to  be  compared  with  the  great  English  drama¬ 
tist.  He  once  showed  a  very  accurate  perception  of 
his  position  as  an  author.  He  said  in  effect  that  it 
was  foolish  to  place  Tieck  by  his  side  —  as  foolish  as 
it  would  be  to  place  himself  by  the  side  of  Shake¬ 
speare.  While  Goethe  was  an  objective  poet  as 
compared  with  Schiller,  he  was  subjective  as  com¬ 
pared  with  Shakespeare.  Goethe’s  own  criticisms  of 
Schiller  tend  to  make  one  feel  perhaps  too  strongly 
the  difference  between  the  two.  Goethe  could  not, 
indeed,  have  introduced  such  a  character  as  the  Mar¬ 
quis  of  Posa  into  such  a  play  as  the  “  Don  Carlos ;  ” 
but  those  of  his  own  dramas  that  have  a  historical 
basis  do  not,  like  Shakespeare’s,  present  the  theme 
in  real  historical  relations.  His  Goetz  von  Ber- 
lichingen  is  a  splendid  character  that  stands  out 
with  a  life  and  reality  of  its  own ;  yet  it  cannot  be 
the  Goetz  of  history.  How  far  it  is  from  the  original 
may  be  judged  by  the  shock  that  we  feel  when  this 
man  of  high  thoughts  and  kindly  feelings  makes 
ready  to  go  out  to  rob  some  traveling  merchants, 
and  speaks  of  the  good  catch  that  he  is  going  to 
make.  Of  course  this  trait  had  to  be  introduced 
because  Goetz  was  a  robber  knight ;  but  the  fact  that 
the  trait  surprises  us  shows  that,  in  other  respects, 
the  character  as  drawn  belonged  to  a  milder  genera¬ 
tion  than  his  own.  But  though  Goethe  stands  thus 
for  the  most  part  below  Shakespeare,  there  is  no 
other  modern  poet  that  stands  so  near  him.  In  the 
“  Faust  ”  the  Shakespearean  height  is  at  times 


250 


ESSAYS 


reached,  while  the  whole  play  has  a  fullness  of  mean¬ 
ing  and  philosophic  suggestion  which  are  foreign  to 
the  works  of  the  English  dramatist.  In  the  union 
of  a  dramatic  power  that  is  unsurpassed  with  this 
wonderful  depth  of  significance  the  “  Faust  ”  stands 
alone  in  literature.  It  may  then  well  be  studied  for 
its  own  sake. 

Besides  this  interest  which  is  due  to  it  as  a  work 
of  the  highest  genius,  the  “Faust”  has  a  borrowed 
interest  from  its  relation  both  to  its  author  and  to 
its  age. 

The  life  of  Goethe  was  one  of  the  fullest,  and  so 
far  as  inner  experience  is  concerned,  one  of  the  most 
varied  with  which  we  are  familiar.  He  began  his 
literary  career  as  the  dominant  spirit  of  the  Sturm 
tmd  Drang  period.  He  ended,  as  a  poet,  by  becoming 
enamored  of  classic  beauty,  and,  as  a  man,  by  becom¬ 
ing  a  courtier  and,  at  least  so  far  as  external  relations 
were  concerned,  an  aristocrat.  Through  all  these 
changes  the  “  Faust  ”  went  with  him.  Begun  in  his 
twentieth  year  and  finished  in  his  eighty-second,  it 
may  stand  as  the  representative  of  his  whole  life. 
When  it  was  finished  he  felt  that  his  life-work  was 
done,  and  that  what  remained  to  him  was  of  the 
nature  of  a  free  gift.  He,  in  fact,  lived  but  a  few 
months  longer. 

It  is  an  interesting  question  why  Goethe  suffered 
the  completion  of  this  work  to  be  so  long  delayed. 
Vischer,  one  of  the  latest  and  most  brilliant  of  the 
commentators  on  the  “Faust,”  has  made  this  a  mat¬ 
ter  of  special  discussion.  The  consideration  which 
he  develops  most  fully  and  with  most  effect  is  based 
upon  the  change  in  Goethe’s  taste,  which  has  been 
already  referred  to,  the  passage  from  the  romantic 


THE  “FAUST”  OF  GOETHE 


251 


to  the  classic  period  of  his  life.  The  “Faust”  was 
begun  in  the  height  of  the  romantic  enthusiasm  of 
his  youth.  It  is  thoroughly  German.  The  legend, 
the  mythology,  the  method  of  treatment,  are  of  the 
North.  The  poem  expresses  the  boundless  aspira¬ 
tion,  the  intense  passion  of  a  spirit  that  had,  as  yet, 
subjected  itself  to  no  limits  in  art  or  in  life.  As 
Goethe  was  brought  face  to  face  with  the  wonderful 
creations  of  classic  art,  a  new  ideal  took  possession 
of  him.  He  felt  the  power  and  the  beauty  of  form, 
and  form  implies  limit.  Form  is  limit.  From  this 
time  his  works  are  so  different  from  the  products 
of  his  youthful  genius  that  they  might  almost  seem 
to  have  sprung  from  another  personality.  In  this 
change  Vischer  finds  one  of  the  most  important 
causes  of  the  long  delays  in  the  completion  of  the 
“Faust.”  This  work  was  in  its  nature  so  opposed 
to  all  Goethe’s  later  habits  of  feeling  and  of  artistic 
creation  that  he  dreaded  to  put  his  hand  to  it,  and 
in  fact  found  it  difficult  to  place  himself  so  in  the 
spirit  of  it  as  to  carry  it  on  to  its  consummation. 
Goethe,  in  fact,  speaks  of  it  as  a  “  barbarous  compo¬ 
sition,”  and  expresses  very  distinctly  his  shrinking 
from  the  task  of  completing  it.  When  he  did  under¬ 
take  this  work,  it  was  in  a  spirit  foreign  to  that  in 
which  it  was  at  first  conceived.  The  portions  of  the 
first  part  which  were  the  latest  composed  Vischer 
finds  to  a  great  extent  incongruous  with  those  first 
written ;  while  the  second  part  he  regards  as  showing 
little  else  than  the  weakness  of  old  age.  He  admits 
that  Goethe  in  other  respects,  even  in  other  forms 
of  literary  and  intellectual  labor,  had  preserved  the 
strength  of  his  maturity ;  but  in  this,  he  insists,  are 
found  only  the  marks  of  senility.  He  maintains  that 


252 


ESSAYS 


by  the  artificialness  of  the  style  of  this  work  Goethe 
did  much  to  corrupt  the  German  language,  and  he 
finds  in  its  substance  much  that  is  simply  ridiculous. 

While  ground  is  not  wanting  for  some  of  the  criti¬ 
cisms  of  Vischer,  others  seem  to  me  wholly  without 
basis ;  for  instance,  when  near  the  close  of  the 
second  part  the  Chorus  of  Blessed  Boys  sing  of 
Faust :  “  He  has  learned,  and  he  will  teach  us.” 

Vischer  finds  in  the  words  a  most  absurd  sug¬ 
gestion.  His  only  notion  of  teaching  is  that  of 
a  schoolmaster.  The  idea  of  Faust’s  becoming  a 
schoolmaster  in  the  next  world  strikes  him  as  very 
funny,  as  well  as  that  of  his  going  to  school.  Even 
the  wish  of  Margaret  that  she  might  be  a  guide  to 
Faust  in  his  new  career  affords  matter  for  similat 
mirth.  Indeed,  in  much  of  his  criticism  Vischer 
writes  like  one  who  is  determined  to  find  faults  at 
any  hazard.  Yet  one  can  almost  pardon  the  violence 
of  his  attack  upon  the  second  part  of  the  “Faust  ” 
for  the  sake  of  his  enthusiasm  for  portions  of  the 
first.  He  says,  indeed,  in  effect,  that  if  one  should 
profess  to  admire  the  second  part  and  at  the  same 
time  to  enjoy  the  first,  he  would  not  believe  him. 
This  is  a  subjective  proposition,  and  doubtless  ex¬ 
presses  the  truth,  so  far  as  Vischers  belief  is  con¬ 
cerned.  This  belief  is,  however,  mistaken.  I,  for 
one,  have  the  greatest  delight  in  the  second  part  of 
the  “Faust;”  yet  that  I  can  pardon  the  unreason¬ 
ableness  of  much  of  Vischer’s  criticism  of  it  because 
he  loves  the  first  part  so  thoroughly  —  this  shows 
what  love  I  have  for  that  part  also. 

In  regard  to  the  cause  by  which  Vischer  would  so 
largely  explain  the  hesitation  in  carrying  on  the  work, 
it  may  be  said  that  this  must  have  had  its  weight. 


THE  “FAUST”  OF  GOETHE 


253 


Yet  I  cannot  but  think  that  here  also  there  is  some 
exaggeration.  In  one  place  Goethe  speaks  of  a 
shrinking  from  taking  up  either  the  “  Faust  ”  or  the 
“  Tasso.”  The  two  are  referred  to  in  the  same  terms. 
The  reasons  which  Vischer  urges  could  not  have  ex¬ 
isted  in  the  case  of  the  “Tasso,”  and  this  fact  shows 
that  we  may  easily  make  too  much  of  similar  expres¬ 
sions  in  regard  to  the  “  Faust.”  Many  a  one  shrinks 
from  placing  his  hand  upon  a  work  which  has  been 
long  neglected,  even  when  no  such  mental  revolution 
has  taken  place  as  that  which  marked  the  develop¬ 
ment  of  the  inner  and  the  artistic  life  of  Goethe. 

However  we  may  explain  the  fact  that  the  comple¬ 
tion  of  the  “  Faust  ”  was  so  long  delayed,  and  how¬ 
ever  we  may  judge  this  delay  to  have  affected  the 
work  itself,  the  fact  remains  that  thereby  the  work 
becomes  identified  with  Goethe’s  entire  life.  It 
represents  it  in  its  varied  phases.  Some  find  this  ele¬ 
ment  of  unity  in  it  when  they  can  find  no  other ;  and 
however  great  the  charm  that  the  work,  in  itself  con¬ 
sidered,  may  have  for  us,  this  added  charm  remains. 

The  “Faust”  derives  even  greater  interest  from 
its  relation  to  the  epoch  in  which  it  was  written  than 
from  that  in  which  it  stands  to  its  author.  It  is  one 
of  the  most  characteristic  creations  of  the  modern  or 
romantic  literature.  Indeed,  no  literary  work  strikes 
its  roots  so  deep  into  our  modern  thought  and  life  as 
this.  The  characteristic  of  the  modern  drama,  as 
distinguished  from  the  ancient,  is  the  predominance 
of  the  individual.  In  the  Greek  drama  we  see  the 
great  social  forces  of  the  world  contending  together. 
In  the  modern  the  relation  is  to  a  much  greater 
extent  between  individual  and  individual.  The  age 
of  chivalry  formed  the  most  picturesque  introduction 


254 


ESSAYS 


to  this  later  development.  In  the  age  of  chivalry 
personal  honor  assumed  the  most  important  place  in 
social  life.  This  honor,  with  its  ambition,  its  sensi¬ 
tiveness,  its  jealousy,  and  its  devotion,  is  the  exalta¬ 
tion  of  the  individual.  In  the  modern  drama  and 
romance  this  individualism  is  seen  under  two  aspects, 
and  these  two  aspects  have  furnished  a  large  part  of 
its  material.  The  first  of  these  that  I  will  name  is 
that  of  love.  Love,  in  its  romantic  sense,  is  the  devo¬ 
tion  of  a  person  to  a  person.  Two  individuals  stand 
apart  from  the  world.  They  demand  each  the  whole 
devotion  of  the  other.  If  they  are  separated  the 
world  seems  empty.  The  whole  plot  of  the  drama 
or  the  romance  consists  in  the  bringing  these  two 
together,  or  in  presenting  the  sadness  of  their  final 
and  hopeless  separation.  In  the  “  Romeo  and 
Juliet,”  for  instance,  we  have  simply  the  glowing 
portrayal  of  such  a  relationship.  To  this  all  else  is 
subsidiary.  We  have  a  background  of  family  hos¬ 
tility.  This  hostility  has  no  basis  that  can  be  called 
epic.  The  two  families  do  not  represent  different 
forces  of  life  or  of  history.  Their  antagonism  is,  so 
far  as  appears,  accidental  and  personal.  It  is  a  colli¬ 
sion  that  sprang  out  of  the  predominance  of  the 
individual.  The  tragic  collision  consists,  on  the  one 
side,  in  the  love  of  these  two  persons  for  each  other, 
each  of  them  being  willing  to  sacrifice  life  itself 
rather  than  live  without  the  other ;  and,  on  the  other 
side,  in  this  family  feud,  which  in  itself  is  without 
significance  except  so  far  as  the  families  themselves 
are  concerned.  I  do  not  say  this  in  criticism  of 
the  play.  The  development  of  the  individual,  the 
worth  which  every  individual,  as  such,  is  seen  to  pos¬ 
sess,  is  the  chief  characteristic  and  the  greatest  glory 


THE  “FAUST”  OF  GOETHE 


2  55 


of  our  modern  world.  It  is  not  strange  that  drama 
and  romance  should  image  this. 

The  second  aspect  that  I  would  name  is  that  of 
sin.  The  villain  holds  as  prominent  a  place  in 
modern  fiction  as  the  lover.  One  of  the  most  im¬ 
portant  elements  in  the  development  of  perhaps  the 
larger  proportion  of  the  plots  of  our  modern  fiction  is 
actual  wickedness.  This  element  of  sin  in  its  per¬ 
sonal  and  specific  sense,  which  fills  so  small  a  place 
in  the  Grecian  drama,  is  thus  one  of  the  chief  instru¬ 
mentalities  in  the  hands  of  the  modern  writer  of 
fiction.  Sin  is  simply  the  extreme  and  absolute  re¬ 
sult  of  the  development  of  the  individual.  It  is  the 
abnormal  aspect  of  this  development,  abnormal  be¬ 
cause  it  is  excessive  even  to  measurelessness  ;  while 
love  is  its  normal  development.  Sin  is  the  complete 
assertion  of  himself  by  the  individual,  as  love  is  the 
surrender  of  himself  by  the  individual.  This  abso¬ 
lute  self-assertion  that  is  manifested  in  sin  is,  how¬ 
ever,  destructive  of  the  true  self.  We  thus  find  a 
deep  meaning  in  the  saying,  “  He  that  saveth  his 
life  shall  lose  it.”  The  self,  seeking  itself  alone,  be¬ 
comes  destitute  of  all  true  content,  and  shrinks  to  a 
point. 

Since  the  individual  as  such  holds  so  prominent 
a  place  in  modern  fiction,  this  exaggeration  of  in¬ 
dividualism  which  we  call  sin  must  have  full  recog¬ 
nition.  Thus  it  is  that  sin,  almost  of  necessity,  takes 
its  place  by  the  side  of  love  as  one  of  the  chief  fac¬ 
tors  of  the  modern  drama  and  romance.  In  the 
works  of  Shakespeare,  for  instance,  there  is  hardly 
one  in  which  wickedness  is  not  a  chief  element  in  the 
working  out  of  the  plot.  We  need  do  no  more  than 
name  “Macbeth,”  “The  Tempest,”  and  “Othello.” 


256 


ESSAYS 


The  “  Romeo  and  Juliet,”  consecrated  to  the  opposite 
aspect  of  the  individual  life,  bears  few  marks  of  this 
which  is  the  degradation  of  the  individual.  In  the 
“  Faust,”  while  love  is  portrayed  with  a  power  that 
could  hardly  be  surpassed,  sin  in  its  nature  and 
effects  is  pictured  as  nowhere  else.  It  is  not  the 
sinner  merely  ;  it  is  sin  that  is  made  prominent,  with¬ 
out  the  sacrifice  of  dramatic  interest.  Indeed,  to  the 
great  heightening  of  this  interest,  the  problem  of  evil 
is  placed  before  us,  and  the  abysses  of  the  spiritual 
life  are  thrown  open.  Matters  that  are  for  the  most 
part  treated  abstractly,  and  that  seem  to  require  to 
be  so  presented,  are  here  manifested  in  their  con¬ 
creteness.  The  depth  to  which  the  roots  of  the  life 
that  is  portrayed  strike  into  the  mystery  of  being 
gives  it  only  a  more  intense  reality.  Thus  it  is  that 
the  “Faust”  may  stand  as  the  work  which  is  the 
type  and  expression  of  the  epoch  to  which  it  belongs  ; 
that  is,  it  may  stand  as  the  most  perfect  type  of  the 
romantic  drama. 

The  importance  of  the  problem  of  sin  in  the  play 
may,  however,  be  easily  exaggerated.  The  Pro¬ 
logue  in  Heaven  would  seem  to  make  this  the  one 
central  and  essential  element  of  the  work.  It  is, 
indeed,  the  most  salient  element  of  the  play  and  the 
one  which  in  the  prologue  most  needs  explanation. 
Whether  or  not  it  is  the  essential  point  is,  however, 
chiefly  a  matter  of  words.  The  problem  of  sin  can¬ 
not  be  presented  except  in  connection  with  some 
theory  of  the  true  life,  just  as,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  theory  of  the  true  life  cannot  be  presented  with¬ 
out  giving  an  important  place  to  the  question  of  sin. 
This  latter  element  furnishes  the  most  profound 
tragedy  of  life,  and  thus,  in  a  drama,  would  naturally 


THE  “FAUST”  OF  GOETHE  257 

be  most  conspicuous.  It  matters  little,  then,  whether 
we  say  that  the  play  deals  with  sin  in  its  relation  to 
the  true  life,  or  that  it  deals  with  the  true  life,  in 
the  picture  of  which  sin  is  shown  in  its  real  rela¬ 
tion  to  this  life.  Although  these  two  forms  of  ex¬ 
pression  really  amount  to  the  same  thing,  in  my  own 
judgment,  taking  the  drama  all  together,  the  latter 
expresses  in  the  truest  perspective  the  subject-matter 
which  the  poem  presents. 

After  this  glance  at  the  “Faust,”  considered  in 
relation  to  its  author  and  to  its  age,  we  will  look  more 
in  detail  at  certain  of  its  parts. 

The  Prologue  in  Heaven  opens  with  the  hymn 
of  the  Archangels.  This  hymn,  to  which,  as  to  so 
much  of  the  poetry  of  Goethe,  no  translation  can  do 
justice,  is  full  of  the  richest  melody.  If  one  doubts 
whether  the  German  language  can  be  musical,  says,  in 
effect,  very  truly  Professor  Boyesen,  let  him  read 
this  song  of  the  archangels,  and  he  will  be  convinced 
of  his  error.  The  song  praises  the  regular  and 
majestic  movement  of  the  heavens.  Raphael  exalts 
the  glory  of  the  sun ;  Gabriel,  the  movement  of  the 
earth,  with  its  changes  from  light  to  darkness  and  the 
mighty  beating  of  the  ocean.  Michael  sings  of 
storm  and  devastation,  yet  shows  that  the  tempests 
are  God’s  messengers,  and  are  subject  to  the  great 
principle  of  order  which  controls  the  universe ;  and 
then  the  three  together  utter  the  grandeur  and  mys¬ 
tery  of  the  whole. 

There  is  a  striking  antithesis  in  the  song  by  which 
it  is  brought  to  a  sublime  climax,  which  is  obvious 
enough;  but,  so  far  as  I  have  seen,  is  distinctly  re¬ 
cognized  in  no  translation.  Raphael  sings  of  the  sun 
that  its  sight  gives  to  the  angels  strength,  even  if  no 


258 


ESSAYS 


one  may  fathom  it.  In  the  chorus  at  the  close,  with 
reference  to  all  the  grandeurs  that  had  been  the  theme 
of  this  utterance  of  praise,  we  read  that  the  sight 
gives  the  angels  strength  because  no  one  can  fathom 
it.  There  is  a  change  of  but  a  single  word,  but  this 
brings  a  new  meaning  into  the  whole.  At  first  we 
are  told  that  the  sight  gives  strength  in  spite  of  its 
mystery ;  at  last,  that  it  gives  strength  because  of 
its  mystery.  As  the  angels  gazed  upon  the  works  of 
the  divine  creation,  at  first  this  mystery  had  a  cer¬ 
tain  repellent  effect.  What  they  could  understand 
gave  them  inspiration  in  spite  of  what  they  could  not 
understand.  As  they  continued  to  gaze,  this  mystery 
so  profound  and  awful  became  itself  an  inspiration, 
and  their  final  utterance  is  in  exaltation  of  it. 

Vischer  happily  calls  attention  to  the  fact  that  this 
hymn  of  the  archangels,  in  which  we  are  made  to 
feel  the  magnificent  harmony  of  which  even  the 
lightning  and  the  tempest  form  a  part,  is  designed 
to  prepare  the  reader  to  feel  that  the  same  order 
must  extend  over  the  moral  world,  and  that  passion 
and  sin  must  have  also  their  appointed  place. 

When  the  song  of  the  angels  is  ended,  we  hear 
the  dissonant  and  mocking  voice  of  Mephistopheles, 
who  appears  like  the  Satan  of  Job  among  the  sons  of 
God.  He  cannot  use  lofty  words.  His  pathos,  he 
tells  the  Lord,  would  move  even  him  to  laughter. 
He  can  see  only  how  men  plague  themselves.  They 
use  the  gift  of  reason  only  to  be  more  beastly  than 
any  beast.  The  high  aspirations  of  man  seem  to  him 
only  like  the  springing  of  a  grasshopper  that  falls 
back,  ever  to  sing  in  the  grass  his  old  song.  When 
the  Lord  reminds  him  of  Faust,  his  servant,  Mephis¬ 
topheles  finds  him  more  absurd  than  the  rest.  The 


THE  “FAUST”  OF  GOETHE 


259 


contrast  between  the  song  of  the  angels,  praising  the 
calm  majesty  of  nature,  and  the  picture  of  human 
life  which  Mephistopheles  presents  may  remind  us 
of  a  like  contrast  in  Emerson’s  Sphinx ;  only  the 
poem  of  Emerson  lacks  the  element  of  mockery 
which  gives  this  peculiar  character  to  the  words  of 
Mephistopheles.  Both  pictures  are  true.  The  world 
of  nature  is  majestic  in  its  grand  order,  while  the 
world  of  man  is  distorted  by  contradictions  and  de¬ 
filed  by  sin.  With  Goethe,  as  with  Emerson,  the 
question  pressed,  Is  there  beneath  or  within  this 
apparent  chaos  of  human  life  a  principle  of  order 
like  that  which  controls  the  external  universe  ?  So 
far  as  Faust  is  concerned,  the  Lord  is  represented  as 
recognizing  such  a  principle.  Faust,  in  spite  of  his 
faults,  is  still  the  servant  of  God.  If  his  service  is 
now  confused,  yet  he  shall  be  soon  led  into  the  light. 
So  confident  is  the  Lord  of  this  inner  integrity  of 
Faust  that  he  puts  him  into  the  hands  of  Mephis¬ 
topheles  as  Job  was  put  into  the  hands  of  Satan. 
He  is  confident  that  Mephistopheles  must  at  last  con¬ 
fess  with  shame  that  a  good  man,  through  all  his 
wandering  in  the  darkness,  is  yet,  in  his  heart,  con¬ 
scious  of  the  right  way.  Later,  the  Lord  extends  to 
the  whole  race  of  man  this  statement  of  the  place  of 
evil  in  the  world  of  man.  The  activity  of  man  can 
too  easily  fall  asleep ;  therefore  the  Lord  gladly  gives 
to  him  as  a  companion  one  who  is  ever  restless,  who 
must,  through  his  very  nature  as  devil,  be  always 
active  and  inciting  to  activity. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  poem  as  dealing  with  the 
problem  of  evil.  We  can  too  easily  exaggerate  the 
fullness  of  the  answer  that  is  given  in  it.  We  must 
in  this  prologue  distinguish  between  the  two  state- 


26o 


ESSAYS 


ments  that  have  been  referred  to.  One  is  that  the 
good  man,  in  spite  of  faults,  in  spite  even  of  sins, 
through  his  very  wandering  finds  himself  at  last  at 
the  goal  which  was  appointed  to  his  life.  The  other 
statement  is  the  general  one  in  regard  to  the  part 
which  temptation  and  sin  play  in  the  world  by  stimu¬ 
lating  to  an  activity  that  might  otherwise  be  lacking. 
Whatever  opinions  we  may  have  in  regard  to  the 
matter  under  discussion,  we  must  recognize  the  fact 
that  Goethe  is  very  careful  in  his  statements.  That 
sin  is,  in  every  case,  a  stepping-stone  to  the  better 
life  he  does  not  say.  It  is  only  the  man  who  is  good 
at  heart  whose  ultimate  victory  is  prophesied.  In¬ 
deed,  in  the  drama  itself,  Faust  and  Margaret  seem 
to  be  exceptional  cases.  There  is  a  whole  world 
where  Mephistopheles  reigns  supreme.  The  revel¬ 
ers  in  Auerbach’s  cellar,  Martha,  all  the  superficial 
and  common  characters  represented  in  the  Walpur- 
gis  night,  —  these  seem  content  in  the  midst  of  the 
sensuality  and  emptiness  of  their  lives.  Faust  and 
Margaret  are  exceptional,  because,  though  they  fall  into 
like  sin,  they  are  conscious  ever  of  a  higher  and  purer 
life.  The  statement  of  the  prologue  is,  then,  that  to 
a  soul  that  is  possessed  of  this  higher  consciousness 
even  the  sins  into  which  it  may  fall  will  become 
helpers ;  while,  so  far  as  life  in  general  is  concerned, 
the  incitements  of  the  devil  prevent  that  stagnation 
that  would  otherwise  be  inevitable.  The  one  class 
of  spirits  must  find  help  from  this  power  that  seems 
most  opposed  to  the  true  life ;  the  other  class  may 
find  such  help. 

The  first  part  of  the  “Faust,”  at  least,  is  probably 
so  familiar  to  most  readers  of  this  essay  that  the 
details  of  the  drama  need  not  be  presented.  I  shall 


THE  “FAUST”  OF  GOETHE  261 

make  only  so  much  reference  to  them  as  is  needed 
to  illustrate  the  inner  life  and  meaning  of  the  whole. 
Faust,  at  first,  appears  before  us  like  his  prototype 
in  the  older  legend,  filled  with  despair  at  the  impossi¬ 
bility  of  reaching  absolute  knowledge.  “  I  find,”  he 
cries,  “  that  we  can  know  nothing  ;  ”  and  this  thought 
consumes  his  heart.  He  had  given  himself  to  the 
pursuit  of  knowledge.  He  finds  that  this  is  un¬ 
attainable.  In  his  eagerness  for  this  he  had  neglected 
the  outer  goods  of  life,  and  now,  as  the  shadows  of 
age  fall  about  him,  he  finds  himself  utterly  empty- 
handed. 

Those  fail  to  understand  the  true  meaning  of  this 
despair  who  seek  to  account  for  it  by  some  peculiarity 
of  the  nature  or  position  of  Faust  himself.  He  never, 
says  one,  could  have  sought  knowledge  in  the  true 
spirit  of  a  scholar,  or  he  would  have  found  content¬ 
ment.  The  trouble  with  him  was,  however,  that  he 
had  sought  knowledge  so  earnestly.  To  know  was  the 
passion  of  his  heart.  To  find  knowledge  to  be  un¬ 
attainable  was  the  real  source  of  his  anguish.  His 
other  regrets  were  but  secondary.  The  great  aim  of 
his  life  had  failed ;  and  in  his  sorrow  for  this  dis¬ 
appointment  there  comes  into  his  mind  the  thought 
of  the  lesser  things  that  he  might  have  gained  had 
not  this  greater  search  absorbed  his  strength.  An¬ 
other  writer  thinks  that  the  theory  of  development 
as  it  is  at  present  held  would  have  satisfied  his  long¬ 
ing.  He  was  seeking,  it  is  urged,  for  the  principle 
of  unity  of  which  all  things  are  the  manifestation, 
and  this  unity  the  development  theory  gives.  The 
suggestion  is  worthy  of  Wagner  himself ;  and  we  can 
almost  hear  the  mocking  answer  that  Faust  would 
make  to  it.  It  would  be  such  an  answer  as  he  made 


262 


ESSAYS 


to  Wagner  when  the  latter  exclaimed  :  “  How  pleasant 
it  is  to  see  what  some  wise  man  has  thought  before 
us  and  then  to  see  how  gloriously  we  have  advanced  !  ” 
“  Yes,”  cries  Faust  in  bitter  satire,  “  yes,  to  the  stars.” 
Herbert  Spencer  may  stand  perhaps  as  the  best 
representative  of  the  development  theory  taken  in  its 
full  extent ;  and  yet  he  is  the  foremost  to  tell  us, 
though  without  the  pain  that  filled  the  heart  of 
Faust,  that  we  can  know  nothing.  From  this  height 
of  knowledge  he  looks  down  into  the  abyss  of  the 
unknowable. 

If  I  understand  the  play  aright,  the  position  of 
Faust  is  not  a  mere  accidental  or  personal  one.  The 
quest  of  one  who  would  be  a  mere  knower  is  a  quest 
that  from  its  very  nature  can  never  reach  its  end. 
Mere  knowledge  is  something  that  has  no  real  exist¬ 
ence.  If  the  play  has  any  lesson  that  it  would  teach, 
it  is  that  one  should  strive,  not  to  know,  but  truly  to 
live.  Mephistopheles,  in  his  conversation  with  the 
student  to  whom  he  appeared  in  the  professorial 
robes  of  Faust,  teaches  from  his  standpoint  the  same 
view,  and  enforces  it  by  example  and  analysis.  Logic, 
he  urges,  is  such  a  preparation  for  thought  as  Span¬ 
ish  boots  would  be  for  running ;  philosophy  shows 
how  things  are  done,  but  it  does  nothing ;  science 
analyzes,  but  the  life  has  escaped  before  the  analysis 
has  begun.  The  commentators  have  maintained  that 
such  criticism  was  meant  to  apply  to  one  system  or 
another.  It  was  meant  to  apply  to  all  systems. 
“Gray,”  cries  Mephistopheles,  “dear  friend,  is  every 
theory ,  and  green  the  golden  tree  of  life.”  The  devil, 
we  are  told,  is  a  liar,  but  he  is  a  liar  that  is  very  apt 
to  speak  the  truth  ;  only  the  truth  from  his  lips  be¬ 
comes  a  lie.  Even  in  the  Garden  of  Eden  the  ser- 


THE  “FAUST”  OF  GOETHE  263 

pent  spoke  the  truth.  Adam  and  Eve,  after  they 
had  eaten  forbidden  fruit,  did  know  good  and  evil. 
The  knowledge,  it  is  true,  did  not  bring  the  joy 
which  they  had  expected,  but  none  the  less  did  the 
promise  prove  true.  Mephistopheles,  I  think,  always 
speaks  the  truth,  or  at  least  what  he  holds  to  be  the 
truth.  The  sentence  which  contrasts  theory  and  life 
contains  the  inmost  teaching  of  the  whole  poem.  Of 
this  teaching  the  beginning  of  the  first  part  of  the 
play  illustrates  one  side,  and  the  end  of  the  second 
part  illustrates  the  other.  Gray  is  all  theory,  and 
green  is  the  golden  tree  of  life.  Mephistopheles 
would  have  the  student  understand  by  life  what  the 
word  means  in  the  speech  of  the  fast  youth  who  is 
eager  to  see  life.  His  words,  however,  have  their 
truth  in  regard  to  that  life  which  alone  is  worthy  of 
the  name.  The  knower  in  the  “  Faust  ”  is  as  imper¬ 
fect  as  he  is  represented  by  Browning  in  the  charac¬ 
ter  of  Paracelsus.  In  seeking  merely  to  know,  the 
spirit  seeks  to  place  itself  outside  the  world  and  over 
against  it,  that  it  may  study  it  the  better.1  In  truth, 
there  is  no  knowledge  save  through  life.  The  mere 
spectator  can  never  divine  what  is  at  the  heart  of 
things.  What  Longfellow  sang  of  the  sea  is  true 
also  of  the  sea  of  life  : 

“  Only  they  who  share  its  dangers 
Comprehend  its  mystery.” 

Now  and  always  the  saying  remains  true  that  “the 
life  is  the  light  of  men.” 

All  this  Faust  is  beginning  to  perceive.  There 
already  begins  to  stir  within  him  a  longing  to  share 
that  life  upon  which,  in  the  search  after  pure  know- 

1  Perhaps  the  best  statement  of  this  position  may  be  found  in 
Fichte’s  Vocation  of  Man. 


264 


ESSAYS 


ledge,  he  had  turned  his  back.  He  longs  with  a  de¬ 
sire  that  is  half  despair  for  the  breasts  of  the  infinite 
nature,  from  which  he  may  draw  life  that  shall  re¬ 
fresh  his  languishing  soul. 

I  am  not  sure  that  this  longing  of  Faust  for  life 
was  not,  after  all,  for  the  sake  of  knowing  what  life 
really  is.  Having  failed  in  his  search  by  means  of 
mere  thought,  he  would  now  learn  by  experience. 
However  this  may  be,  it  was  the  desire  to  know  that 
first  drove  him  to  magic.  He  would  see  whether 
thereby  many  a  mystery  might  not  be  made  clear. 

In  this  also  we  have  a  close  following  of  the  origi¬ 
nal  legend.  The  first  great  change  in  the  story  is 
found,  however,  in  the  fact  that  the  earliest  magical 
incantation  that  was  used  by  the  Faust  of  Goethe 
was  intended  to  summon,  not  the  devil,  but  the  earth- 
spirit.  The  spirit  appears  in  a  flame  and  utters  the 
song  which  is  one  of  the  sublimest  passages  in  the 
poem. 

Faust  was  filled  with  a  lofty  joy  at  finding  himself 
in  this  great  presence.  He  seemed  to  be  near  that 
infinite  source  of  life  and  knowledge  for  which  he 
longed.  “Busy  spirit,”  he  exclaimed,  “how  near  I 
feel  myself  to  thee  !  ”  The  spirit  harshly  repelled  this 
drawing  into  a  closer  companionship.  It  answered : 
“  Thou  art  like  the  spirit  whom  thou  comprehendest, 
not  like  me.” 

This  apparition  of  the  world-soul,  the  rebuff  which 
Faust  received  from  it,  and  the  pointing  to  another 
spirit,  which  he  in  some  sense  could  comprehend,  all 
this,  I  confess,  was  long  an  enigma  to  me.  So  far  as 
I  have  studied  the  commentaries,  they  throw  no  light 
upon  it.  It  is  not  sufficient  to  conjecture  what  the 
passage  might  possibly  mean  if  it  stood  by  itself. 


THE  “FAUST”  OF  GOETHE 


265 


No  loose  relation  to  the  movement  of  the  tragedy 
can  satisfy  us.  It  is  so  solemn  and  so  sublime,  it  con¬ 
tains  such  a  pointed  exclusion  of  Faust  from  any 
companionship  with  the  world-spirit,  and  points  him 
so  definitely  to  some  other  spirit,  that  it  must  have  a 
very  close  and  organic  relation  with  the  movement 
of  the  whole.  It  is  not  enough  to  say,  as  is  often 
said,  that  Faust  could  not  comprehend  this  spirit 
because  it  represents  the  undifferentiated  whole,  that 
he  was  pointed  from  it  to  other  spirits,  fragmentary 
like  himself,  which  because  they  were  partial  were  , 
comprehensible.  This  does  not  help  sufficiently  the 
working  out  of  the  plot.  It  contains  no  hint  as  to 
the  cause  of  the  sternness  with  which  he  was  re¬ 
pelled,  nor,  in  fact,  of  the  repulsion  itself.  Why 
could  not  the  spirit,  the  source  of  all  life,  welcome  to 
itself  any  of  those  forms  of  life  which  are  its  mani¬ 
festation  ?  This  central  power  is  the  source  of  all 
activity.  It  is  the  great  mother  of  all  existences. 
Why  should  it  not  welcome  any  one  of  its  children 
to  its  bosom  ?  Why  should  it  cast  off  any  one  of  its 
children  in  scorn  ? 

Kuno  Fischer  would  make  of  the  scene  with  the 
earth-spirit  a  survival  from  an  early  plan  which 
Goethe  began  to  carry  out,  but  relinquished.  Ac¬ 
cording  to  this  plan,  Fischer  maintains,  Mephis- 
topheles  was  brought  into  relation  with  Faust,  not 
by  the  Lord,  but  by  the  world-soul.  The  world-soul 
was  the  controlling  power  of  the  poem  in  this  earlier 
plan,  and  its  appearance  was  not  accidental  but  es¬ 
sential.  This  theory  is  defended  and,  to  a  superficial 
glance,  justified  by  one  or  two  other  passages  of  the 
poem.  In  one  Faust  evidently  apostrophizes  this 
spirit.  It  is  the  passage  that  begins,  “  Sublime  spirit, 


266 


ESSAYS 


thou  gavest  me,  gavest  me  all  for  which  I  begged. 
Not  in  vain  didst  thou  turn  to  me  thy  countenance 
in  fire.”  This  reference  to  the  apparition  in  fire 
leaves  no  doubt  in  regard  to  the  object  to  whom  this 
utterance  is  addressed.  Faust  goes  on  to  thank  the 
spirit  for  all  his  gifts,  but  finally  exclaims  :  “  Thou 
gavest  me,  in  connection  with  the  bliss  that  brings 
me  near  and  nearer  to  the  gods,  this  companion,  whom 
I  cannot  do  without,  although,  cold  and  shameless, 
he  lowers  me  before  myself,  and  with  the  breath  of  a 
word  changes  all  thy  gifts  to  nothingness.”  This 
passage  stands  in  perfect  contrast  to  the  Prologue 
in  Heaven.  That  represents  Faust  as  given  over  to 
the  companionship  of  Mephistopheles  by  the  Lord  ; 
this  represents  the  same  result  to  have  been  accom¬ 
plished  by  the  world-soul.  The  two  views  are  irre¬ 
concilable.  Therefore,  says  Fischer,  Goethe  must 
have  begun  his  poem  with  the  idea  of  making  the 
world-soul  the  power  that  bound  Faust  to  Mephis¬ 
topheles  ;  later  he  changed  his  plan,  made  over  and 
completed  the  play,  and  wrote  the  Prologue  in  Hea¬ 
ven  ;  but,  in  working  over  his  old  material  according 
to  the  new  idea,  one  or  two  passages  remained  in 
their  earlier  form,  and  these  testify  to  the  change. 
I  have  seen  no  attempt  to  explain  how  such  a  con¬ 
summate  artist  as  Goethe  could  have  overlooked  this 
contradiction,  or,  if  it  were  perceived,  have  suffered 
it  to  remain.  Fischer,  indeed,  goes  so  far  as  to  ana¬ 
lyze  still  further  the  parts  of  the  poem  in  which 
Mephistopheles  figures,  and  to  discriminate  between 
the  Mephistopheles  that  represents  the  first  plan  and 
the  one  that  represents  the  second.  The  latter  alone 
is  devilish.  That  this  more  delicate  contradiction 
could  remain  is  conceivable,  but  that  the  coarse  and 


THE  “FAUST ’’.OF  GOETHE 


267 


obvious  contradiction  which  forms  the  basis  of  this 
criticism  could  remain,  is  to  my  mind  incredible.  The 
veriest  bungler  in  literature  would  have  felt  the  dis¬ 
crepancy  to  be  too  glaring  to  be  endured. 

The  contradiction,  however,  between  the  two  views 
of  Faust’s  relation  to  Mephistopheles,  as  these  are 
represented  in  different  parts  of  the  poem,  does  exist, 
and  must  have  existed  with  the  full  knowledge  and 
consent  of  the  author.  What  does  it  imply  ?  It  im¬ 
plies,  simply,  that  Faust  himself  had  not  read  the 
Prologue  in  Heaven,  and  that  he  knew  nothing  of 
what,  according  to  the  poem,  had  taken  place  in  the 
councils  of  Heaven.  Of  the  devil’s  wager  with  the 
Almighty  he  had  never  heard.  I  do  not  know  how 
Fischer  supposes  that  Faust  ever  had  heard  of  this 
transaction,  or  what  reason  he  imagines  why  he 
should  shape  his  words  in  accordance  with  it.  Faust 
had  met  the  world-soul  face  to  face.  This  had  repre¬ 
sented  itself  to  him  as  the  active  agent  in  the  great 
processes  of  the  world.  It  stood  to  him  in  the  place 
of  God.  What  could  be  more  natural  than  that  he 
should  have  ascribed  the  shaping  of  his  own  destiny 
to  it  ?  The  passages  which  have  been  the  source  of 
so  much  speculation  show  simply  that  Goethe  was  so 
good  an  artist  that  he  suffered  his  creations  to  speak 
from  what  was  naturally  their  own  point  of  view,  and 
did  not  make  them  give  utterance  to  the  sentiments 
that  were  suitable  to  his  own  point  of  view  alone. 
They  walk  in  the  shadows  and  speak  of  what  they 
do  not  comprehend.  He  is  the  providence  that 
watches  over  all,  and  sees  both  the  beginning  and 
the  end. 

Kuno  Fischer  cites  several  passages,  besides  that 
already  referred  to,  to  prove  the  change  of  conception 


268 


ESSAYS 


in  regard  to  Mephistopheles.  He  contrasts,  for  in¬ 
stance,  the  different  terms  in  which  Mephistopheles, 
in  different  parts  of  the  poem,  speaks  of  the  reason. 
In  the  Prologue  in  Heaven,  addressing  the  Lord, 
Mephistopheles  says  of  man  : 

“A  pity  ’tis  Thou  shouldest  have  given 
The  fool,  to  make  him  worse,  a  gleam  of  light  from  Heaven. 
He  calls  it  reason,  using  it 
To  be  more  beast  than  ever  beast  was  yet.”1 

On  the  other  hand,  after  the  bargain  with  Faust 
has  been  struck,  Mephistopheles,  left  for  a  moment 
alone,  moralizes  about  the  matter,  saying  in  effect 
that  so  soon  as  a  man  begins  to  despise  reason  he  is 
lost.  In  the  one  case  reason  is  spoken  of  as  the 
enemy  of  man  ;  in  the  other  as  his  best  friend.  I 
can  find  here  no  trace  of  the  difference  of  view  of 
which  Kuno  Fischer  makes  so  much  account.  Ac¬ 
cording  to  the  picture  which  Mephistopheles  draws 
in  the  Prologue  in  Heaven,  it  is  the  intermittent 
following  of  reason  that  brings  evil  to  man.  It  is 
not  the  spring  to  Heaven,  taken  by  itself,  that  does 
the  harm  ;  it  is  the  sinking  back  into  the  mud  of 
earth.  In  the  second  exclamation  of  Mephistopheles 
we  are  pointed  to  this  second  stage  of  the  process. 
Faust  had  taken  the  grasshopper’s  spring  ;  now  he 
was  to  plunge  into  depths  into  which  he  would  not 
have  fallen  had  it  not  been  for  the  leap. 

Of  all  the  passages  that  have  been  referred  to  in 
this  connection  I  find  but  one  which  would  be  more 
easily  understood  by  the  assumption  of  a  change  of 
plan.  It  is  the  passage  in  which  Mephistopheles  — 
after  the  bargain  has  been  made,  and  while  Faust  is 
absent,  preparing  to  go  forth  with  him,  and  just  be- 

1  Brooks’  translation. 


THE  “FAUST”  OF  GOETHE  269 

fore  the  young  student  enters  —  exults  over  his  prize. 
He  says  of  Faust : 

“  He  shall  through  life’s  wild  scenes  be  driven, 

And  through  its  flat  unmeaningness 
I  ’ll  make  him  writhe  and  stare  and  stiffen, 

And,  ’midst  all  sensual  excess, 

His  fevered  lips,  with  thirst  all  parched  and  riven, 
Insatiably  shall  haunt  refreshment’s  brink.”  1 

It  certainly  is  somewhat  strange  that,  just  after  hav¬ 
ing  pledged  himself  to  satisfy  Faust,  Mephistopheles 
should  triumph  in  the  thought  of  the  dissatisfaction 
which  was  before  his  victim.  I  have  been  in  the 
habit  of  regarding  this  passage  as  implying  a  time  in 
which  Faust  should  become  wearied  and  disgusted, 
so  that  at  last  he  would  gladly  accept  what  the  devil 
should  give  him.  I  do  not  claim  that  this  is  alto¬ 
gether  satisfactory.  On  the  other  hand,  this  single 
passage  seems  insufficient  to  support  the  theory  of 
such  a  radical  change  of  plan  as  is  assumed  by 
Fischer.  Especially  is  this  the  case  when  the  plan 
itself  involves  many  and  great  difficulties.  The  force 
of  several  passages,  in  which  Mephistopheles  speaks 
of  himself  as  the  devil,  and  of  others,  in  which  he 
makes  allusions  which  imply  that  he  is  the  devil, 
is  not  at  all  weakened  by  the  special  pleading  in 
which  Fischer  indulges  in  regard  to  them.  In  the 
very  next  lines  to  those  just  quoted  Mephistopheles 
speaks  of  Faust’s  bargain  with  him  as  a  giving  of 
himself  to  the  devil.  “And  even  if  be  had  not  given 
himself  over  to  the  devil  he  would  go  to  perdition.” 
In  this  very  passage,  then,  equal  difficulties  face  us 
on  either  hypothesis,  so  it  may  be  counted  out.  This 
being  so,  there  remains  nothing  which  in  my  judg¬ 
ment  favors  the  theory  of  Fischer.  The  theory  in 

1  From  Brooks’  translation. 


270 


ESSAYS 


itself  considered  has  everything  against  it.  Fischer 
speaks  of  the  enthusiasm  for  nature  that  marked  the 
time  when  the  “  Faust  ”  was  begun.  It  was  an  awaken¬ 
ing  to  a  new  life.  Rousseau  had  contributed  largely 
to  this  awakening.  Goethe  was  filled  with  the  spirit 
of  it.  Fischer  calls  it,  in  effect,  the  revolt  of  the 
natural  against  the  unnatural.1  It  was  the  insight 
“  ‘  that  the  direct,  original  face-to-face  with  nature, 
and  a  life  founded  upon  this,  is  the  best  that  man 
can  wish  for  himself.’  ”  Out  of  this  feeling  towards 
nature  sprang  the  passion  with  which  Faust  is  repre¬ 
sented  as  turning  to  the  earth-spirit.  What  is  there 
in  this  enthusiasm  for  nature  that  should  lead  to  the 
idea  that  the  world-spirit  should  reward  Faust’s  ap¬ 
peal  by  giving  to  him  a  companion  who  should  lead 
him  to  destruction  ?  Why  should  Mephistopheles,  a 
representative  and  instrument  of  the  world-spirit,  pass 
himself  off  for  the  devil  ?  If  it  was  by  way  of  joke, 
as  Fischer  would  imply,  it  is  certainly  a  more  inane, 
unsuggested,  and  purposeless  joke  than  he  elsewhere 
indulges  in.  These  questions  present  themselves, 
and  from  Fischer’s  position  they  seem  to  be  unan¬ 
swerable.  If  Goethe  had  meant  to  satirize  the  en¬ 
thusiasm  for  the  natural,  he  might  have  written  such 
a  play  as  Fischer  imagines  ;  but  Fischer  presents  him, 
truly,  as  himself  filled  with  this  enthusiasm.  “  But,” 
says  Fischer,  “it  is  nature  that  Faust  invoked  with 
passionate  longing;”  and  he  would  imply  that  Mephis¬ 
topheles,  appearing  in  response  to  this  appeal,  must 
be  a  messenger  of  nature.  It  is  true  that  Faust  first 
turns  to  the  spirit  of  the  earth,  but,  repulsed  here,  he 
seeks  elsewhere.  “  Oh,”  he  cries,  “  if  there  are  spirits 
in  the  air,  who  hover,  bearing  sway  between  heaven 


1  “  Urnatur  gegen  Unnatur.” 


THE  (l  FAUST”  OF  GOETHE 


271 


and  earth,  oh,  descend  from  the  golden  haze ;  and 
lead  me  to  a  new  and  varied  life.  Oh,  if  I  had  only  a 
magic  mantle  !  ”  It  is  this  invocation  of  the  spirits  of 
the  air  and  of  the  powers  of  magic  to  which  Mephis- 
topheles  responds. 

It  is,  then,  not  possible  to  explain  the  vision  of  the 
earth-spirit,  and  the  rebuff  that  Faust  receives  from 
it,  as  a  survival  from  an  earlier  plan  of  the  poem,  at 
least  not  from  the  plan  which  Fischer  suggests.  At 
the  same  time  its  prominence  does  not  allow  us  to 
regard  it  as  a  meaningless  episode.  Its  solemnity 
shows  that  it  fills  an  important  position  in  the  devel¬ 
opment  of  the  play.  We  have  now  to  seek  its  true 
meaning. 

The  view  which  I  have  already  stated,  of  the  sig¬ 
nificance  of  the  opening  of  the  poem,  makes  easy  the 
interpretation  of  the  passage  that  we  are  considering. 
Faust  had  sought  to  know.  He  was  a  spectator  of 
the  universe.  He  wanted  to  see  and  to  understand. 
It  was  because  more  knowledge  was  found  by  him  to 
be  impossible  that  he  was  in  despair.  He  felt  him¬ 
self  outside  of  the  great  world  to  which  he  belonged. 
He  would  draw  from  the  breasts  of  nature  life,  but 
he  knew  not  where  to  find  them.  He  turned  to 
magic  to  see  if  in  this  manner  the  end  for  which  he 
longed  could  not  be  attained.  There  appeared  to  him 
that  spirit  which  is  the  active  principle  of  the  world. 
He  saw  before  him  the  very  heart  of  things,  from 
which  could  come  the  solution  of  all  mysteries. 
“Busy  spirit,”  he  cried,  “how  near  I  feel  myself  to 
thee  !  ”  The  word  used  by  Faust  suggests  the  con¬ 
trast  between  himself  and  the  spirit  which  he  ad¬ 
dressed.  The  spirit  was  busied.  Its  very  essence 
was  labor  and  accomplishment.  It  was  simply  the 


272 


ESSAYS 


Doer.  It  existed  only  for  the  accomplishment  of  the 
true  ends  of  the  universe.  In  the  great  work  which 
formed  its  being  Faust  had  no  part.  We  have  the 
Knower  and  the  Doer  face  to  face.  It  is  a  contrast 
that  may  be  compared  to  that  in  Browning’s  “  Para¬ 
celsus,”  in  which  one  who  lived  to  know  and  one  who 
lived  to  love  stand  over  against  one  another,  and  we 
see  the  imperfection  of  each.  Here  we  are  made  to 
feel  the  imperfection  of  Faust  alone.  The  work  of 
the  Doer  was  moving  on  in  magnificent  accomplish¬ 
ment.  The  attempt  of  the  Knower  had  proved  an 
utter  failure.  The  search  for  truth  as  something 
apart  from  life  had  ended  in  negation.  Life  to  Faust 
seemed  hollow  and  empty.  “  Thou  art  like,”  cried 
the  world-soul,  “  the  spirit  thou  comprehendest,  not 
like  me.”  The  world-soul  represented  the  positive 
and  solid  reality  of  things.  In  the  negative  state 
which  Faust  had  reached  he  had  no  kinship  with  this 
soul.  The  spirit  he  resembled  was  the  spirit  of  nega¬ 
tion.  This  he  could  comprehend.  The  cynicism,  the 
mockery  of  Mephistopheles  were  to  him  as  a  familiar 
speech.  Mephistopheles  became  to  him  a  compan¬ 
ion  that  he  could  not  do  without.  His  own  secret 
thoughts  and  longings  were  by  him  brought  into  con¬ 
sciousness  and  helped  towards  their  realization.  Thus 
the  appearance  of  the  world-soul,  its  rejection  of  Faust, 
its  pointing  him  to  a  companionship  more  congenial, 
all  fill  that  place  in  the  working  out  of  the  plot  which 
the  dignity  of  the  scene  requires. 

There  is  another  aspect  of  the  relation  of  Faust 
to  the  world-spirit  which  must  not  be  overlooked. 
He  was  not  only  the  disappointed  seeker  after  ab¬ 
stract  knowledge.  In  his  disappointment  he  had 
begun  to  long  for  life.  Why  did  not  this  longing 


THE  “  FAUST ”  OF  GOETHE 


273 


bring  him  nearer  to  the  working  principle  of  the  life 
of  things?  The  words  “busy  spirit”  still  suggest 
the  relation  between  the  two.  Failing  to  know, 
Faust  begins  to  long  for  enjoyment.  He  would  be 
the  receiver,  not  the  giver.  He  would  draw  in  life, 
which  he  had  no  care  to  communicate.  He  would 
be  an  end,  not  a  means.  In  his  thought  of  life  he 
stands  as  much  alone,  over  against  the  world,  as  in 
his  thought  of  knowledge.  Over  against  the  busy 
spirit  he  is  still  the  idler.  He  has  not  the  faith  in 
the  great  activities  of  the  world  that  would  make 
him  long  to  share  them.  Mephistopheles,  with  his 
isolation  and  his  negations,  is  still  the  being  that  he 
can  comprehend.  This  is  seen  in  the  readiness  of 
Faust  to  curse  the  world  when  it  failed  to  give  him 
what  he  demanded  of  it. 

The  words  of  Faust,  as  he  feels  the  bitterness  of  his 
repulse,  are  suggestive  :  “Not  like  thee?  like  whom, 
then  ?  I,  the  image  of  divinity,  and  not  even  like 
thee !  ”  Faust  is  conscious  that  he  is  in  some  sense 
the  image  of  God,  and  thus  he  cannot  understand  his 
rejection  by  one  of  God’s  instruments,  by  the  power 
that  shapes  the  living  garment  of  divinity.  The 
phrase  reminds  us  how  different  is  the  attitude 
toward  Faust  of  the  Lord,  as  represented  in  the  pro¬ 
logue,  from  that  occupied  by  the  world-soul.  The 
difference  results  from  the  fact  that  the  one  was 
the  Lord,  and  the  other  was  merely  his  instrument. 
The  instrument  is  finite.  It  is  a  part.  It  can  com¬ 
prehend  nothing  beyond  itself.  It  must  do  its  work, 
no  matter  what  stands  in  its  way.  The  Lord  is  in¬ 
finite.  He  is  not  busied.  Himself  the  source  of  all 
activity,  his  own  repose  is  undisturbed.  He  is  not  par¬ 
tial  or  one-sided.  He  has  a  place  for  all.  He  that  is 


274 


ESSAYS 


striving  to  know  and  he  that  is  striving  to  do  have  each 
his  recognition,  for  he  sees  that  great  unity  of  life 
and  knowledge  which  is  the  goal  towards  which  each 
is  aiming.  Even  the  newly  wakened  hungering  of 
Faust,  which  now  seeks  only  selfish  satisfaction,  he 
sees  will  not  be  appeased  till  it  has  sought  and  found 
more  worthy  food.  Thus  while  the  world-soul  rejects 
Faust  with  scorn  and  points  him  to  that  world  of 
negation  which  was  his  temporary  resting-place,  the 
Ford  still  stretches  over  him  his  watchful  love,  and 
knows  that  these  negations  are  but  a  stage  in  his 
endless  pilgrimage. 

At  the  moment  when  Faust’s  whole  nature  is  in 
tension,  when  hope  and  joy,  pride,  disappointment, 
and  a  bewildered  shame  are  struggling  together  in 
his  heart,  comes  the  knock  of  Wagner.  This  char¬ 
acter  has,  I  think,  had  scant  justice  done  it  by  the 
critics,  and  its  place  in  the  drama  has  not  been  quite 
clearly  recognized.  Wagner,  in  fact,  represents  the 
shell  which  Faust  had  just  cast  off.  He  holds  fast 
to  all  the  hopes  and  faiths  which  Faust  had  found  to 
be  delusive.  He  is  the  scholar  who  has  implicit  faith 
in  scholarship  ;  the  student  who  believes  that,  if  he 
studies  long  enough  and  rightly,  he  will  come  at  last 
to  some  real  knowledge ;  that  in  fact  bit  by  bit  real 
knowledge  is  being  attained  by  him.  It  is  the  object 
of  the  play  to  make  such  a  position  ridiculous,  and 
some  degree  of  caricature  is  introduced  into  the  pic¬ 
ture.  The  caricature  is  slight,  however,  and  I  have 
sometimes  wondered  how  many  of  the  critics  who 
laugh  at  Wagner  have  really  a  secret  sympathy  with 
him.  If  he  is  literal  and  prosaic  and  narrow-minded, 
all  this  is  the  natural  and  logical  result  of  the  faith 
that  is  the  inspiration  of  his  life ;  namely,  that  in 


THE  “FAUST”  OF  GOETHE 


2  75 


books  is  to  be  found  the  source  of  real  knowledge. 
He  is  one  who  thus  takes  the  world  at  second  hand. 
He  expects  one  day  to  preach,  but  he  knows  nothing 
of  life ;  so  he  thinks  that  the  player  might  teach  him 
how  to  reach  the  hearts  of  men.  As  he  would  thus 
get  into  practical  relations  with  the  world  through 
the  art  of  the  player,  so  books  take  with  him  the 
place  of  the  living  realities  of  the  universe.  The 
kinship  of  which  I  have  just  spoken,  between  Faust 
and  Mephistopheles,  may  be  illustrated  by  the  fact 
that  Faust  uses  with  Wagner  precisely  the  same  sort 
of  speech,  half  argument  and  half  mockery,  which 
Mephistopheles  uses  with  the  student  who  had  come, 
full  of  faith,  to  the  university  as  the  source  of  all 
knowledge. 

Wagner  departs  and  Faust  is  again  alone.  It  was 
easy  to  show  the  folly  and  blindness  of  the  book¬ 
worm.  Faust  sees  through  the  delusion  of  Wagner. 
That  is  a  stage  of  development  that  he  has  already 
passed  through.  This,  however,  is  gone  and  there  is 
nothing  to  take  its  place.  He  was  disgusted  by  the 
entrance  of  this  honest-hearted  student,  but  now  that 
he  is  gone  he  feels  himself  none  the  happier.  He  is 
alone  in  the  great  emptiness  of  the  universe.  He 
finds  nothing  solid  which  his  hand  can  grasp,  or  upon 
which  his  foot  can  rest.  He  is  overwhelmed  with 
despair,  and  seeks  the  flask  by  the  aid  of  which  he 
may  leave  this  earthly  scene,  which  has  nothing  for 
him,  no  matter  into  what  new  realms  of  untried  evil 
his  soul  may  enter.  As  he  raises  the  fateful  cup  to 
his  lips,  the  Easter-song  breaks  upon  his  ear,  and 
checks  his  hand.  This  song,  the  first  of  those 
melodies  of  wonderful  beauty  which  Goethe  scatters 
through  his  work,  does  not  touch  the  heart  of  Faust 


276 


ESSAYS 


so  as  to  awaken  it  to  new  faith  and  hope.  It  speaks 
to  him  not  of  the  future  or  of  the  present,  but  of  the 
past.  It  brings  back  the  sweet  peace  of  his  child¬ 
hood.  He  recalls  what  it  was  simply  to  live.  Then 
the  great  breach  between  knowing  and  being  had  not 
opened.  Then  he  was  not  looking  at  the  world  from 
the  outside  ;  he  was  himself  a  part  of  it.  He  rested 
on  the  bosom  of  nature  as  only  a  little  while  before 
he  had  rested  upon  his  mother’s  breast.  This  sense 
of  life,  even  though  it  is  now  only  a  memory,  comes 
to  him  with  a  power  of  salvation.  He  has  become 
again  for  the  moment  as  a  little  child,  and  there  is 
the  possibility  that  he  may  yet  enter  into  the  king¬ 
dom  of  heaven. 

In  the  next  scene  we  are  taken  out  of  the  study, 
with  its  faiths  and  its  despairs,  and  brought  into  that 
world  of  life  which  finds  in  the  study  its  reflection. 
This  scene,  in  which  one  group  after  another  passes 
us  in  lively  or  varied  conversation,  is  of  its  kind  one  of 
the  most  pleasing  and  realistic  that  the  drama  affords. 
I  dwell  upon  it,  however,  merely  to  notice  an  inter¬ 
esting  literary  resemblance.  Wagner,  who  is  with 
Faust,  shrinks  from  the  noise  and  confusion,  from 
the  dance  and  the  merry-making.  He  is  willing  to 
be  there  in  such  respectable  company  as  that  of 
Faust,  but  would  not  willingly  trust  himself  there 
alone.  Faust,  with  his  larger  spirit  and  freer  thought, 
justifies  his  sympathy  with  these  people  in  the  hour 
of  gladness  which  has  come  to  them  in  the  midst  of 
the  weariness  and  constraint  of  their  every-day  life. 
There  is  a  singular  parallel  to  this  in  the  history  of 
Confucius.  He,  too,  found  himself  with  a  disciple  in 
a  like  scene.  It  was  the  joy  of  the  harvest  festival, 
and  the  disciple  thought  that  less  merry-making  and 


THE  “FAUST”  OF  GOETHE 


2  77 


more  prayers  of  thanksgiving  would  be  better.  Con¬ 
fucius  showed  the  same  sympathy  with  the  life  of 
the  people  that  we  find  in  Faust.  He  explained  to 
his  disciple  that  their  joy  was  their  thanksgiving.  It 
would  be  interesting  to  know  if  Goethe  was  familiar 
with  this  scene  in  the  life  of  the  Chinese  philosopher. 
In  any  case  the  resemblance  is  very  striking  and 
suggestive. 

Never  did  Faust  appear  more  interesting  than  in 
this  ramble.  His  sympathy  with  the  people  and  their 
joys,  their  gratitude  to  him  for  his  service,  which  he 
regarded  as  purely  imaginary,  the  poetic  form  which 
his  unrest  put  on  in  the  longing  to  follow  the  setting 
sun  in  its  endless  course,  and  thus  to  see  the  day 
ever  awakening  to  a  fresh  life,  all  this  throws  about 
his  nature  an  air  of  sweetness  and  greatness  that  we 
hardly  find  elsewhere.  Yet  it  was  in  the  course  of 
this  very  stroll  that  he  came  in  contact  with  the  dark 
power  that  was  for  a  while  to  control  his  life. 

Mephistopheles  is  one  of  the  most  marvelous  crea¬ 
tions  of  human  genius.  It  is  marvelous  because  in 
it  that  is  a  fact  which  in  advance  we  should  have  said 
to  be  an  impossibility.  Mephistopheles  represents 
the  central  element  of  sin  ;  but  sin  in  the  thought  of 
the  poet  is  wholly  a  negation.  In  Mephistopheles, 
then,  we  have  that  paradox,  an  embodied  negation. 
The  work  is  really  performed.  There  is  in  Mephis¬ 
topheles  no  trace  of  that  which  gives  substance  to 
other  lives.  The  only  principle  which  is  active  in  him 
is  that  of  destruction.  At  the  same  time,  he  is  one 
of  the  most  real  of  the  characters  of  fiction.  It  is 
only  our  philosophy  which  teaches  us  that  he  is  at 
heart  a  nonentity.  Further,  this  power  of  destruc¬ 
tion  as  thus  embodied,  instead  of  being  harsh  and 


278 


ESSAYS 


fierce,  is  almost  genial  and  has  a  fascination  peculiar 
to  itself.  This  fascination  is  not  like  that  which  we 
feel  in  respect  to  the  Satan  of  Milton.  The  hero  of 
Milton’s  epic  —  for  such  we  may  call  him  —  was  an 
archangel  fallen.  We  find  in  him  still  something  of 
the  archangel.  There  is  a  certain  nobility  about  him 
which,  under  the  circumstances,  is  sublime.  Mephis- 
topheles  possesses  no  vestige  either  of  nobility  or 
of  sublimity.  He  is  never  the  hero.  What  gives  to 
him  a  personality,  and  a  personality  that  fascinates, 
is  his  wit.  The  wit  of  Mephistopheles  is  absolute. 
It  is  free  from  any  other  element.  It  is  never  humor. 
It  is  never,  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word,  bitter. 
Humor  on  the  one  side  and  bitterness  on  the  other 
imply  a  certain  real  or  possible  substance  to  the 
world.  They  imply  on  the  one  side  a  certain  kindli¬ 
ness,  or  on  the  other  a  certain  disappointment.  The 
wit  of  Mephistopheles  is  a  simple  play  as  of  a  lam¬ 
bent  flame.  He  finds  contradictions  everywhere; 
and  the  greatest  of  contradictions  is  the  manifesta¬ 
tion  of  anything  like  earnestness  in  this  empty  world. 
All  enthusiasm,  all  that  is  heroic,  all  that  is  despair¬ 
ing,  excites  only  his  mirth.  Such  was  the  companion 
with  whom  Faust  was  to  be  bound  in  the  closest 
intimacy. 

The  fact  that  Mephistopheles  announced  so  dis¬ 
tinctly  as  he  did  to  Faust  his  nature  and  his  plans 
has  excited  some  surprise.  We  might  explain  it  as 
an  archaic  touch  wholly  in  keeping  with  the  play, 
according  to  which  the  character  announces  himself 
as  he  enters.  We  may  recall  what  I  have  already 
remarked,  that  the  devil  is  a  truth-speaker.  In  the 
play  of  Marlowe  and  in  Widman’s  “Life  of  Faust  ” 
Mephistopheles  is  just  as  frank  and  outspoken.  In 


THE  “ FAUST ”  OF  GOETHE 


279 


truth,  however,  the  matter  needs  little  explanation. 
In  the  mood  in  which  Faust  was,  no  credentials  could 
have  been  more  welcome  than  those  which  Mephis- 
topheles  brought.  He  found  in  him  the  very  com¬ 
panion  that  he  needed.  The  earth-spirit  was  right : 
here  was  one  whom  he  could  comprehend,  and  whom 
in  his  present  condition  he  resembled.  The  utter 
unbelief  of  Mephistopheles  seemed  but  the  echo  to 
his  own  faithlessness.  The  aim  of  Mephistopheles, 
which  would  content  itself  with  nothing  else  but  the 
complete  destruction  of  the  universe,  fell  in  com¬ 
pletely  with  his  own  view  of  things.  To  him,  also, 
the  world  had  no  worth  that  should  reserve  it  for  a 
better  fate.  Thus  he  greeted  Mephistopheles  as  the 
sufferer  greets  a  physician  who  he  feels  understands 
his  case.  He  poured  into  his  ear  all  his  ennui  and 
his  despair ;  and  when  Mephistopheles  reminded  him 
that  on  a  certain  night  he  had  not  drunk  a  brown 
juice,  he  uttered  a  curse  upon  whatever  there  may  be 
of  love  and  nobility  in  life,  ending  with  the  cry,  “  A 
curse  upon  hope,  a  curse  upon  faith,  and  above  all,  a 
curse  upon  patience  !  ” 

So  far  in  the  connection  between  Faust  and  Meph¬ 
istopheles  we  have  been  following  what  might  have 
been  the  old  story  of  a  compact  with  the  devil.  Ac¬ 
cording  to  the  familiar  course  of  things,  the  devil 
should  bind  himself  to  serve  man  upon  the  earth,  and 
the  man  should  pledge  his  soul  to  the  devil  after 
death.  This  was  indeed  the  pact  which  Mephis¬ 
topheles  proposed.  The  story,  however,  at  this  point, 
leaves  the  beaten  track,  and  enters  upon  a  course 
which  will  lead  through  regions  of  thought  that  are 
wholly  foreign  to  the  original  legend.  Faust  made  a 
change  in  the  bargain  by  which  its  whole  nature  was 


28o 


ESSAYS 


transformed.  If  ever  Mephistopheles  can  bring  to 
Faust  contentment,  if  he  ever  comes  to  such  a  point 
that  he  can  say  to  the  moment,  “  Stay,  thou  art  so 
fair,”  then  he  is  willing  to  fall  forever  into  the  power 
of  the  devil.  The  bargain  is  one  that  hardly  needed 
to  be  made.  The  soul  that  is  content  with  lower 
joys  shows  thereby  that  it  has  no  hungering  for  the 
higher.  So  long  as  this  hungering  remains,  the  soul 
is  free  from  the  grasp  of  evil.  Such  dissatisfaction 
is  the  pain  which  shows  that  in  spite  of  disease,  life  — 
and  with  life  hope  —  remains. 

Mephistopheles  seems  not  to  have  noticed  this 
change  in  the  terms  of  the  bargain,  or,  if  he  did,  he 
was  so  sure  of  victory  that  he  did  not  think  it  worthy 
of  remark.  He,  it  must  be  remembered,  had  no  faith 
in  the  soul.  Nothing  was  more  amusing  to  him  than 
anything  that  showed  any  belief  in  its  existence. 
Whatever  was  not  of  the  earth  earthy  was  either 
hypocrisy  or  delusion.  He  was  going  to  bring  before 
Faust  such  solid  and  tangible  joys  that  all  his  romantic 
longings  would  disappear  like  the  visions  of  a  night. 

Kuno  Fischer  continually  speaks  of  the  agreement 
of  Faust  with  Mephistopheles  as  a  wager,  and  won¬ 
ders  that  Faust  was  not  on  his  guard  against  the 
possibility  of  losing  it.  It  was  not  a  wager ;  it  was  a 
bargain.  Faust  really  hoped  that  Mephistopheles 
would  perform  the  work,  and  was  ready  to  pay  for  it 
the  full  price. 

We  here  enter  upon  the  second  stage  in  the  his¬ 
tory  of  Faust.  The  first  was  that  in  which  he  sought 
for  knowledge  as  apart  from  life.  This  attempt 
wholly  failed.  He  found  himself  in  a  world  of 
emptiness.  That  world  he  has  now  left.  He  has 
passed  over  to  its  opposite,  and  will  now  begin  to 


THE  “FAUST”  OF  GOETHE  281 

live.  He  enters  a  world  that  is  fresh  and  real,  and 
is  to  seek  what  this,  in  its  turn,  has  to  offer  him.  As 
before  he  would  have  all  knowledge,  so  now  he  would 
have  the  whole  of  life.  Whatever  is  allotted  to  all 
humanity  he  would  experience  in  his  inner  self.  He 
would  heap  the  weal  and  the  woe  of  all  mankind  upon 
his  own  bosom,  and  thus  broaden  himself  to  itself. 
Mephistopheles  explains  to  him  that  this  is  impossi¬ 
ble.  It  would  be  to  bring  together  the  most  opposite 
qualities  —  magnanimity  and  cunning,  the  wildness 
of  youth  and  the  calmness  of  age.  Thus  already  was 
Mephistopheles  at  his  wits’  end.  The  first  wish  of 
Faust  it  was  beyond  his  power  to  gratify.  He  does 
not  suspect,  however,  that  this  shows  that  he  is  deal¬ 
ing  with  an  element  that  is  vaster  than  his  calculation. 
Nothing  less  than  the  absolute  life,  the  life  that  is 
common  to  all,  will  satisfy  Faust.  This  infinite  long¬ 
ing  is  the  expression  of  an  infinite  nature.  Faust 
has  not  yet  learned  how  this  longing  is  to  be  met. 
He  thinks  that  it  is  by  expanding  his  individual  self 
into  the  infinite  that  his  end  is  to  be  gained.  This  is 
the  first  experiment  that  he  is  to  make  in  the  world 
of  life.  He  will  later  discover  his  mistake,  and  will 
find  that  there  is  another  and  a  better  way  to  accom¬ 
plish  his  purpose.  At  present  he  simply  feels  the 
force  of  the  reasoning  of  Mephistopheles,  and  hum¬ 
bled  and  disappointed  he  goes  forth  to  take  whatever 
the  devil  has  to  offer  him. 

How  little  Mephistopheles  understood  his  man 
may  be  seen  by  the  first  attempt  which  he  made  at 
his  amusement.  He  took  him  into  Auerbach’s  cellar. 
We  find  ourselves  in  a  scene  of  merrymaking  which 
forms  the  sharpest  contrast  to  the  former  life  of 
Faust.  It  is  a  wonderful  picture,  brilliant  through 


282 


ESSAYS 


its  very  stupidity.  Nothing  could  be  more  inane,  yet 
the  very  inanity  is  a  triumph  of  the  poet’s  art.  We 
have  pointless  jokes  and  songs,  the  moral  of  which, 
if  there  be  one,  is  hardly  perceptible  through  the 
silliness  within  which  it  is  wrapt.  This  is  the  first 
selection  of  dainties  which  Mephistopheles  has  to 
offer.  We  are  not  surprised  that  Faust  exclaims  in 
the  midst  of  it,  “Now  I  should  like  to  go.” 

Mephistopheles  evidently  thinks  that  the  trouble 
is  that  Faust  is  too  old.  If  he  were  only  a  little 
younger  he  would  feed  joyously  on  the  devil’s  pasture- 
land.  So  we  have  the  scene  in  the  witch’s  kitchen. 
This  scene,  of  course,  has  to  do  only  with  the  ma¬ 
chinery  of  the  play.  Fantastic,  grotesque,  absurd, 
stimulating  at  every  point  our  curiosity  to  know 
whether,  beneath  the  nonsense,  there  is  any  grain  of 
sense,  tantalizing  us  with  suggestions  that,  when  we 
fairly  look  at  them,  seem  after  all  pointless,  or  with 
follies  that  we  suspect  are  not  quite  so  stupid  as  they 
seem,  it  has  a  charm  which  only  the  highest  genius 
could  impart.  The  witch  brews  a  drink  which  re¬ 
stores  to  Faust  his  youth. 

We  here  begin  what  might  almost  be  considered 
as  a  new  play.  What  goes  before  has  little  more 
direct  connection  with  that  which  follows  than  the 
Prologue  in  Heaven  has  with  the  whole  play.  With 
the  exception  of  one  or  two  hits  by  Mephistopheles, 
as  where  he  tells  Faust  that  the  Professor  still  sticks 
in  his  body,  there  is  no  apparent  identity  between  the 
Faust  of  the  earlier  part  of  the  play  and  the  Faust  of 
the  later.  The  unity  is  purely  ideal.  The  second 
Faust  is  a  gay  youth  not  without  the  germs  of  no¬ 
bility  of  soul.  This  remark  is  important  in  regard  to 
the  relation  between  the  first  and  second  parts  of  the 
poem,  and  I  shall  have  occasion  to  refer  to  it  again. 


THE  “FAUST”  OF  GOETHE 


283 


Faust  being  thus  made  over,  Mephistopheles 
thought  that  he  had  him  wholly  in  his  power.  “  With 
this  drink  in  your  body,”  he  murmured,  “you  will  see 
a  Helen  in  every  woman.”  Here  again  he  showed 
that  he  did  not  know  his  man,  and  that  he  had  no 
conception  of  the  spiritual  element  in  life.  Faust 
did  not  wait  his  move.  We  shall  see  later  to  what 
sort  of  company  Mephistopheles  would  have  brought 
him.  Faust  chose  for  himself.  He  chose  the  last 
person  under  the  last  circumstances  that  Mephis¬ 
topheles  would  have  wished.  He  met  Margaret  on 
her  way  from  church,  and  his  whole  future  was  col¬ 
ored  by  the  meeting.  He  saw  her  only  as  a  beautiful 
woman.  Though  he  was  doubtless  hardly  conscious 
of  it,  the  beauty  that  charmed  him  was  that  of  a 
beautiful  body  transfigured  by  a  beautiful  soul.  With¬ 
out  the  spirit  that  gave  to  it  its  special  charm  the 
beauty  would  have  had  little  power  over  him. 

So  much  has  been  written  about  Margaret  that 
one  can  hardly  venture  to  hope  to  add  anything  fresh 
to  the  theme.  If,  however,  there  has  been  an  error 
in  regard  to  her,  it  is  to  be  found  in  the  tendency  to 
make  of  her  too  much  of  a  heroine.  The  stately 
dame  that  figures  in  the  opera  of  Gounod  is  hardly 
less  like  the  original  of  Faust’s  play  than  the  Mar¬ 
garet  who  is  presented  in  some  of  the  eloquent  crit¬ 
icisms  of  the  poem.  The  charm  of  Margaret  is  in 
her  simplicity  and  innocence,  in  her  childish  piety, 
and  in  the  self-forgetful  goodness  of  her  heart.  Ex¬ 
cept,  perhaps,  in  one  or  two  of  the  songs  that  are 
put  into  her  mouth,  she  does  not  pass  beyond  the 
limits  of  the  class  to  which  she  belongs.  It  was  a 
fine  touch  by  which,  after  her  long  conversation  with 
Faust  in  Martha’s  garden  —  a  conversation  in  which 


284 


ESSAYS 


she  had  been  the  chief  talker,  pouring  out  all  her 
history  with  the  simple  garrulousness  of  a  child  —  she 
is  made  to  say,  “Thou  dear  God,  how  such  a  man 
can  think  of  everything  !  I  could  only  stand  ashamed 
before  him,  and  say  to  everything,  ‘Yes.’’'  This 
shows  the  most  complete  lack  of  vanity  and  of  self- 
consciousness.  Of  all  that  she  had  said  she  could 
remember  nothing.  She  thought  that  she  had  said 
nothing ;  all  that  she  could  remember  was  the  pre¬ 
sence  which  had  overmastered  her  spirit.  A  like 
unconsciousness  we  find  in  her  religion  as  she  sat  in 
church  —  half  child’s  play,  half  God  in  her  heart. 

The  purity  of  her  nature  shows  itself  in  her  anx¬ 
iety  about  the  religion  of  Faust.  She  questioned 
him,  and  he  answered  with  that  sublime  creed  of  the 
philosopher  which  has  become  so  renowned.  Vischer 
has  well  indicated  the  lack  in  this  creed.  There  is 
no  recognition  of  the  moral  element  of  the  great 
power  that  is  in  and  through  and  over  all.  God  is 
the  good.  Had  Faust  really  felt  this  and  uttered  it 
in  his  statement  of  his  faith,  the  interview  might  have 
had  another  ending.  As  it  was,  this  Vague  though 
sublime  utterance  of  Pantheism  only  smoothed  the 
way  for  the  descent  into  the  gulf  that  yawned  be¬ 
neath  Faust  and  Margaret.  Margaret  knew  that 
Faust  put  the  matter  in  a  different  way  from  that 
used  by  the  Priest.  The  words,  however,  expressed 
a  lofty  faith  in  something,  and  she  had  faith  in  Faust, 
and  was  content. 

Such  was  the  simple-hearted  maiden  for  whose  ruin 
Hell  and  Earth  and  Heaven  seemed  to  unite.  There 
were  the  schemes  of  Mephistopheles,  the  devil  incar¬ 
nate.  There  was  the  neighbor,  Martha,  cut  out  to 
be  his  instrument.  There  were  jewels  ;  and,  above 


THE  “FAUST”  OF  GOETHE 


285 


all,  there  was  Faust,  with  the  nobility  that  his  sin 
and  his  passion  could  not  wholly  obscure.  It  was 
this  lofty  nature  of  Faust  that  was  the  representative 
of  Heaven  in  the  strife.  It  was  this  that  won  Mar¬ 
garet’s  heart,  just  as  it  was  the  sacred  innocence  of 
Margaret  that  had  won  the  heart  of  Faust.  These 
elements  of  a  higher  nature  were  strong  enough  to 
bring  them  together  in  heartiest  love.  They  were 
not  strong  enough  to  control  the  course  which  this 
affection  took.  They  even  kindled  the  flames  of  the 
passion  that  was  to  destroy  Margaret  and  blacken 
Faust. 

When  Faust  bade  Mephistopheles  procure  Mar¬ 
garet  for  him,  the  latter  confessed  his  inability.  It 
is  not  necessary  to  suppose  with  Vischer  that  he 
pretended  to  find  difficulty  merely  to  whet  Faust’s 
appetite.  Rather  must  we  understand  that  here  as 
always  he  spoke  the  truth.  Margaret  did  not  belong 
to  his  sphere,  and  over  her  he  had  no  control.  This 
was  only  the  second  demand  that  Faust  had  made  of 
him.  Neither  of  these  demands  could  Mephistopheles 
meet.  When  Faust  took  the  lead,  Mephistopheles 
was  forced  to  confess  his  weakness.  When  he  him¬ 
self  took  the  lead,  Faust  was  disgusted  and  would 
not  follow. 

The  struggle  in  Faust’s  heart  is  portrayed  with 
terrible  reality.  He  saw  the  evil  that  he  was  bringing 
upon  Margaret,  and  fled.  Mephistopheles  followed 
him  and  strove  to  bring  him  back  to  complete  the 
work  of  destruction.  Here  he  was  obliged  to  bring 
into  play  forces  which  for  the  most  part  he  ignored. 
Nothing  would  move  Faust  but  the  picture  of  the 
sad  loneliness  of  his  beloved.  The  better  elements  of 
his  nature  were  here  again  made  to  accomplish  the 


286 


ESSAYS 


work  of  the  lower.  It  was  the  divine  element  within 
him  entangled  in  the  meshes  of  the  sensual. 

In  the  Walpurgis  night  Mephistopheles  showed 
what  he  had  to  offer  when  left  to  his  own  devices. 
In  this  we  have,  under  the  vivid  picturing  of  the 
witches’  Sabbath,  represented  by  symbol  or  illustra¬ 
tion,  whatever  is  false  and  empty,  selfish,  sensual,  and 
devilish  in  human  life.  We  are  taken  into  the  devil’s 
realm.  We  see  his  creatures  separated  from  what¬ 
ever  of  nobler  and  purer  may  in  common  life  be 
mingled  with  them,  and  sometimes  half  conceal  them. 
This  is  the  signification  of  the  Walpurgis  night ;  and 
its  place  in  the  drama  is  thus  seen  to  be  a  central  and 
essential  one.  Here  again  Faust  was  not  at  home. 
When  he  left  the  fair  witch  with  whom  he  was  dan¬ 
cing,  Mephistopheles  expressed  his  surprise.  Faust 
said  that  it  was  because  a  red  mouse  had  of  a  sudden 
leaped  out  of  her  mouth.  This  may  symbolize  the 
vulgarity  and  sensuality  by  which  Faust  was  simply 
disgusted.  He,  too,  might  fall  for  a  moment  into 
sin,  but,  as  we  have  seen,  the  active  power  was,  after 
all,  the  spirit  which  was  manifested  in  the  flesh. 
Suddenly,  in  the  midst  of  the  wild  scene,  appeared, 
in  a  tragic  contrast  hardly  equaled,  the  form  of 
Margaret  with  pallid  face,  and  with  a  red  line  about 
the  throat  that  suggested  the  headsman’s  axe.  Thus 
was  the  conscience  of  Faust  awakened  in  the  midst 
of  the  revels  which  had  already  given  him  nothing 
but  disgust. 

The  scene  in  the  prison  cell,  with  which  the  first 
part  of  the  “Faust”  closes,  is  of  wonderful  power. 
The  madness  of  Margaret,  in  which  she  was  haunted 
by  the  sin  which  she  had  unconsciously  or  in  frenzy 
committed ;  the  human  love  and  the  piety  that  made 


THE  “FAUST”  OF  GOETHE 


287 


themselves  felt  through  her  madness ;  the  love,  the 
despair,  the  fruitless  strivings  of  Faust,  and  the  cold 
cynicism  of  Mephistopheles,  all  unite  to  make  a  pic¬ 
ture  the  equal  of  which  has  hardly  been  given  us  by 
Shakespeare  himself. 

Here  we  see  again,  at  the  last,  the  mistake  which 
Mephistopheles  has  made  all  along  in  ignoring  the 
higher  spiritual  realities.  He  has  seen  nothing  but 
flesh  and  sense,  sin  and  penalty.  Of  love  and  the 
inspiration  which  it  brings  he  has  had  no  conception. 
He  heard  nothing  of  the  spiritual  harmonies  which 
accompanied  the  clangors  of  the  earth.  Now,  at  last, 
when  the  sin  was  committed  and  the  retribution  had 
fallen,  he  fancied  that  his  victim  was  wholly  in  his 
power ;  but  here  also  he  had  started  into  action  spir¬ 
itual  forces  which  were  mightier  than  suffering  and 
sin.  There  is  a  power  in  repentance  which  lies  out¬ 
side  of  all  human  calculation.  Often  men  have  no 
faith  in  the  higher  spiritual  realities,  no  faith  in  the 
great  law  of  righteousness,  until  by  wrongdoing  they 
have  hurled  themselves  against  these  eternal  realities. 
With  repentance  or  remorse  comes  a  consciousness 
of  that  eternal  law  against  which  they  had  sinned, 
but  in  the  existence  of  which  they  had  before  pos¬ 
sessed  no  faith.  Thus  sin  itself  may  contain  the 
elements  of  the  better  life.  This  is  the  paradox  of 
life.  It  is  a  truth  that  is  considered  dangerous ;  all 
truth  is  dangerous.  One  who  would  play  with  life 
is  wounded  by  any  verity  which  he  may  seek  to 
use  as  a  toy.  Mephistopheles  thought  that,  as  Mar¬ 
garet  died  in  shame,  his  victory  was  won.  “  She 
is  condemned,”  he  cried ;  but  a  voice  from  on  high 
answered,  “She  is  saved.”  Mephistopheles  calls  to 
Faust,  “  Come  with  me,”  and  the  two  vanish  together  ; 


2  88 


ESSAYS 


but  a  voice  dying  away  in  the  distance  calls  to 
him,  “Henry,  Henry.”  It  is  the  voice  of  Margaret. 
With  this  the  first  part  of  the  play  closes.  Faust  is 
left  between  the  two  voices.  On  the  one  side  is  the 
devil,  who  would  drag  him  into  new  sin  ;  on  the  other 
is  Margaret,  who  calls  to  him  from  the  spiritual 
heights  of  the  new  existence  into  which  she  had 
entered.  This  close  of  the  play  —  for  the  first  part 
may  be  considered  as  a  play  in  itself  —  seems,  at  first 
sight,  to  leave  undecided  the  wager  which  the  Pro¬ 
logue  in  Heaven  set  before  us.  Faust  is  left  between 
the  forces  of  good  and  evil  which  seek  to  control  his 
life.  The  result  is  not,  however,  so  void  of  signifi¬ 
cance  as  might  appear.  Mephistopheles  had  em¬ 
ployed  his  arts.  So  far  as  his  real  purpose  was 
concerned  they  had  been  unsuccessful,  although  to 
outer  seeming  they  had  wrought  all  which  he  had 
designed.  We  have  seen  that  the  soul  may  preserve 
something  of  its  integrity  even  in  the  midst  of  sin. 
We  have  seen  that  sin  itself  may  be  the  inspiration 
to  a  higher  life.  It  is  much  that  we  have  seen  this, 
even  though  the  future  of  Faust  may  remain  still 
uncertain.  The  cry  of  Margaret,  which  ends  the 
piece,  holds  out  a  hope  that  he  will  at  some  time 
follow  her  into  the  better  life  which  she  has  attained. 

We  thus  see  that  the  first  part  of  the  play  has  a 
certain  completeness.  At  the  same  time  we  see  that 
there  is  space  for  a  second  part,  in  which  the  victory 
of  Faust  himself  shall  be  presented  to  us.  To  this 
second  part  of  the  play  we  will  now  turn. 

In  the  opening  of  the  second  part,  Faust  appears 
lying  upon  a  bed  of  roses.  Ariel  and  his  attendant 
fairies  hover  about  him  and  sing  to  him  songs  of 
wonderful  sweetness.  The  scene  is  ordinarily  spoken 


THE  “FAUST”  OF  GOETHE 


289 


of  as  symbolizing  the  healing  and  purifying  power  of 
nature.  Doubtless  this  is  to  some  extent  true.  It 
really  stands,  however,  in  antithesis  to  the  scene  in 
the  witch’s  kitchen.  Here  also  is  an  element  of 
magic.  The  fairies  bring  to  him  a  draught  of  “Lethe,” 
which  washes  away  all  memory  of  his  past  life.  The 
magic  is  as  real  as  that  of  the  witch’s  kitchen, 
though  from  the  nature  of  the  case  it  is  beautiful 
and  exalting  in  its  form,  instead  of  being  grotesque 
and  hideous.  Faust  awakes  to  a  new  life.  We  find 
as  little  trace  of  the  tragic  history  which  has  thus 
far  occupied  us  as  we  find  in  the  period  just  closed 
traces  of  the  Professor’s  study  and  striving.  Here 
as  there  the  interest  that  carries  us  forward  is  ideal 
rather  than  personal. 

Faust  watches  the  light  as  it  creeps  down  the 
mountain-side,  until  at  last  the  sun  appears  above 
the  summit  and  dazzles  him  with  its  brightness.  He 
turns  his  back  upon  the  sun  and  sees  its  glory  re¬ 
flected  in  the  rainbow  that  hovers  over  a  plunging 
cataract. 

He  finds  in  this  experience  a  hint  and  symbol  of 
the  true  method  of  seeking  the  truth.  Not  in  its 
absolute  unity,  which  no  man  can  comprehend,  which 
by  its  very  sublimity  blinds  the  eye  that  wrould  gaze 
upon  it,  is  to  be  found  the  object  of  his  contempla¬ 
tion.  This  absolute  truth  is  to  be  studied  as  it  is 
reflected  in  human  life.  In  this  reflection  we  find 
life  itself,  and  to  this  we  turn. 

The  peculiarity  of  my  interpretation  of  the  second 
part  of  the  “Faust”  is  that  it  regards  the  poem  as 
symbolizing  chiefly  the  development  of  history,  in¬ 
stead  of  that  of  the  individual.  This  has  been  more 
or  less  recognized  by  others,  but,  so  far  as  I  remem- 


290 


ESSAYS 


ber,  only  by  the  way.  Of  course,  as  the  story  is  in 
the  form  of  the  life  of  an  individual,  this  appearance 
must  be  preserved.  There  must  be  enough  of  this 
to  give  consistency  to  the  whole. 

The  life  at  the  court  represents  in  its  extreme 
form  the  devil’s  world  —  the  world  of  worldliness, 
above  which  humanity  is  eventually  to  rise.  In 
this  Mephistopheles  is  at  home,  and  he  aids  in  its 
degradation.  This  is  the  starting-point  of  the  bio¬ 
graphical  side  of  the  poem,  and  the  central  one  so 
far  as  the  historical  side  is  concerned.  From  this 
we  pass  to  the  great  symbolical  representation  of 
past  and  future.  First  comes  the  masquerade.  This 
gives  us  the  picture  of  the  rise  and  fall  of  the  state 
in  its  merely  political  and  social  aspect.  As  it  goes 
on,  we  find  that  it  is  Rome  that  is  especially  taken 
as  the  representative  of  this. 

The  closing  scenes  of  the  play  belong  to  the  indi¬ 
vidual  life  of  Faust.  In  truth,  they  belong  no  less 
to  the  symbolic  part.  In  these  closing  scenes  both 
portions  of  the  play  find  their  consummation.  The 
reader  who  will  keep  in  mind  the  distinction  between 
these  elements  in  the  course  of  the  play,  and  their 
blending  at  its  close,  will  have  gone  far  towards  a 
clear  comprehension  of  the  whole. 

This  is,  however,  obviously  but  an  approach  to 
such  comprehension  of  the  play.  It  is  not  the  com¬ 
prehension  itself.  This  requires  a  clear  idea  of  what 
is  signified  by  the  parts  of  the  play  that  I  have  called 
symbolical.  These  form,  indeed,  to  a  very  large  ex¬ 
tent,  the  substance  of  the  second  part  of  the  “  Faust,” 
and  everything  depends  upon  getting  the  right  con¬ 
ception  of  these. 

The  other  method  of  explanation  would  make  these 


THE  “FAUST”  OF  GOETHE 


291 


symbolisms  refer  to  the  individual  experiences  of 
Faust.  He  went  into  politics  ;  he  studied  art ;  and 
these  stages  of  his  development  are  presented  in  this 
grand  and  indirect  way.  This  method  has  been  most 
generally  followed  by  the  commentators. 

My  method  would  make  these  symbolic  representa¬ 
tions  wholly  transcend  the  limits  of  Faust’s  personal 
experiences.  They  place  before  us  the  development 
not  of  the  individual  but  of  the  race.  We  have  cer¬ 
tain  great  and  typical  moments  in  the  history  of 
humanity  presented  under  the  only  form  in  which 
this  was  possible,  that  of  symbolism.  This  latter 
method  of  interpretation  I  regard  as  unquestionably 
the  true  one.  It  alone  gives  a  meaning  which  is 
worthy  of  the  sublime  machinery.  Even  under  the 
guidance  of  this  clue  there  remain  many  difficulties 
unsolved,  but  a  general  harmony  is  obtained  ;  the 
great  masses  fit  themselves  together,  and  the  reading 
of  the  play  becomes  a  delight  and  an  inspiration. 
From  this  point  of  view  we  can  understand  what 
Goethe  meant  by  affirming  that  the  second  part  of 
the  play  was  objective,  while  the  first  was  subjective. 
The  first  gave  the  inner  development  of  a  single 
spirit ;  the  second  gives  the  great  movement  of  the 
history  of  man. 

I  said  that  the  closing  scenes  of  the  play  form  the 
consummation  of  both  the  elements  of  which  the  sec¬ 
ond  part  consists.  We  can  now  see  the  possibility  of 
this.  These  closing  scenes  represent  the  final  triumph 
and  redemption  of  Faust.  The  redemption  of  the 
individual,  however,  can  be  nothing  peculiar  to  him. 
Under  the  same  form  may  be  presented  the  highest 
moment  in  the  life  of  the  individual  and  in  the  history 
of  the  race.  The  true  life  of  a  heroic  soul  only  anti- 


292 


ESSAYS 


cipates  the  slower  movement,  of  the  great  body  of 
which  this  single  spirit  is  a  part. 

This  I  conceive  to  be  the  content  of  the  masquer¬ 
ade,  in  which  the  emperor  and  his  courtiers,  includ¬ 
ing  Faust  and  Mephistopheles,  take  part.  We  first 
have  the  elements,  good  and  bad,  that  enter  into 
civilization,  all  of  which  show  plainly  the  marks  of 
art  or  artifice,  as  distinguished  from  the  simplicity 
of  nature.  At  last  all  these  are  succeeded  by  a  mag¬ 
nificent  series  of  symbols,  which,  in  my  judgment, 
can  represent  only  the  tremendous  glory  and  the  no 
less  tremendous  fall  of  the  Roman  empire.  This 
stands  as  the  representative  of  the  ideal  political  his¬ 
tory  of  a  people,  where  the  political  elements  are 
affected  slightly,  if  at  all,  by  other  than  political 
forces.  It  also  marks  one  great  movement  in  the 
actual  history  of  the  world. 

Representing  what  I  conceive  to  be  the  heroic  age 
of  Rome,  victory  appears  borne  upon  an  elephant. 
On  either  side  walk  hope  and  fear,  both  bound,  as 
being  alike  prejudicial  to  the  common  weal.  After 
this  moment  of  strength  and  triumph  comes  the 
period  of  wealth  and  of  art.  Plutus  appears  in  a 
chariot  drawn  by  fiery  dragons,  guided  by  a  boy  who 
symbolizes  poetic  and  artistic  imagination.  This  is 
the  golden  Augustan  age,  in  which  wealth  was  in 
some  respects  led  by  the  genius  that  was  dependent 
upon  it.  The  height  of  power  and  glory  had  been 
reached  ;  now  comes  the  fall.  Avarice  and  lust,  greed 
for  gold,  in  a  word,  all  the  destructive  forces  of  so¬ 
ciety  hurry  the  social  world  to  destruction.  The 
sylvan  deities  appear,  which  represent  the  rude  bar¬ 
barian  forces  that  broke  in  upon  the  world  that  had 
been  so  strong  and  so  fair,  and  it  sinks  amid  flame 
and  terror. 


THE  “FAUST”  OF  GOETHE 


293 


From  the  realm  of  political  growth  and  downfall 
we  turn  to  that  of  aesthetic  development  —  from 
Rome  to  Greece. 

In  the  original  legend  Faust  is  represented  as  call¬ 
ing  up  from  among  the  shades  certain  forms  that 
were  famous  in  the  ancient  world,  and  especially 
that  of  Helen.  Later  Faust  marries  Helen  and  has 
by  her  a  son.  Mother  and  child  both  disappear  at 
the  death  of  Faust.  By  a  happy  inspiration  of  genius 
Goethe  uses  this  story  to  symbolize  the  springing  of 
the  modern  romantic  poetry  from  the  union  of  the 
modern  life  with  the  spirit  of  Grecian  art  and  beauty. 

The  emperor  demanded  the  appearance  of  Helen. 
Mephistopheles  explains  to  Faust  that  to  accomplish 
this  he  must  descend  to  the  “mothers.”  Their  abode 
is  described  in  awe-inspiring  terms.  The  meaning  of 
all  this  would  seem  to  be  that  to  recreate  the  beauty 
of  the  past  one  cannot  work  mechanically  from  with¬ 
out,  but  must  share  the  life  from  which  it  originally 
sprang ;  must  descend  thus  to  the  very  secret  springs 
of  being.  Helen  appears,  and  Faust  becomes  enam¬ 
ored  of  the  vision  which  he  had  conjured  up.  When 
she  disappears,  he  is  left  with  an  intense  longing 
to  look  on  her  again.  The  classic  Walpurgis  night 
represents  his  search  for  this  ideal  of  beauty.  In 
this  we  see  the  development  of  classic  beauty  from 
the  earlier  and  ruder  types  to  its  complete  perfection. 
Through  this  wilderness  of  germinant  life  Faust 
wanders  in  his  quest.  The  consummation  of  the 
process  is  represented  by  the  beautiful  scene  in  which 
Galatea  enters  with  her  train.  After  that,  begins 
the  phantasmagoria  of  Helen.  Helen  is  represented 
as  returning  to  the  home  of  Menelaus.  She  is,  how¬ 
ever,  made  to  believe  that  Menelaus  means  to  sacri- 


294 


ESSAYS 


fice  her  as  a  victim  to  the  gods.  She  would  flee. 
The  scene  changes  from  ancient  Greece  to  the 
Europe  of  the  Middle  Ages.  Faust,  who  appears  as 
a  mighty  ruler,  receives  her  and  places  her  upon  his 
throne.  From  their  union  springs  the  boy  Euphorion, 
who  represents  the  romantic  poetry  which  was  the 
result  of  the  blending  of  the  classic  beauty  with  the 
spirit  of  mediaeval  Europe.  Especially  Euphorion 
represents  Lord  Byron,  in  whom  this  romantic  poetry 
assumed,  in  the  judgment  of  Goethe,  its  most  perfect 
form. 

In  the  brief  abstract  which  I  have  just  given  I 
have  hardly  referred  to  the  wonderful  poetic  beauty 
by  which  every  page  is  marked.  My  purpose  has 
been  merely  to  put  into  the  hands  of  the  reader  a 
clue,  by  the  help  of  which  he  may  be  able  to  trace 
out  and  to  enjoy  this  beauty  for  himself. 

The  fact  just  referred  to,  that  Euphorion  con¬ 
fessedly  represents  specially  the  genius  of  Lord 
Byron,  I  regard  as  conclusive  as  to  the  true  method 
of  interpreting  the  second  part  of  the  “  Faust.”  If 
Faust  were  considered  merely  as  an  individual,  there 
would  be  something  utterly  absurd  in  making  Lord 
Byron,  in  any  sense  however  symbolical,  his  son. 
If,  however,  Faust  here  represents  mediaeval  human¬ 
ity,  or  in  any  way  the  genius  of  the  Middle  Ages,  there 
is  a  profound  meaning  in  making  the  genius  of  Lord 
Byron  the  offspring  of  his  union  with  the  classic 
beauty  of  Greece. 

Before  advancing  to  the  consummation  of  the  play 
we  must  go  back  and  consider  a  character  which  has 
been  left  unnoticed  in  our  brief  review,  because  only 
at  this  point  could  his  relation  to  the  play  be  made 
clear.  I  refer  to  the  most  whimsical  and  the  most 


THE  “FAUST”  OF  GOETHE 


295 


mysterious  personage  called  Homunculus.  I  confess 
at  the  outset  that  this  creation  appears  to  me  to 
mar  somewhat  the  exquisite  beauty  of  the  poem.  At 
best  there  is  something  artificial  and  awkward  about 
him.  Faust,  just  before  entering  upon  the  pursuit  of 
Helen,  which  is  represented  in  the  classic  Walpurgis 
night,  finds  himself  with  Mephistopheles  in  his  old 
study.  Mephistopheles,  penetrating  into  the  labora¬ 
tory,  finds  Wagner,  the  former  famulus  of  Faust, 
whose  pedantic  and  mechanical  views  of  life  had  been 
already  referred  to,  busied  with  retorts  and  other 
chemical  instrumentalities,  in  the  attempt  to  con¬ 
struct,  by  such  artificial  means,  a  man.  By  the  help 
of  Mephistopheles,  as  it  would  appear,  the  experiment 
is  so  far  successful  that  the  Homunculus  is  produced. 
This  is  a  being  which  the  art  of  the  chemist  was  not 
able  to  bring  into  full  existence.  He  appears  as  a 
shining  form  enclosed  in  a  flask,  capable  of  moving 
through  the  air,  and  filled  with  the  most  intense 
longing  for  a  fully  developed  life.  He  is  extremely 
smart,  according  to  the  Yankee  sense  of  this  word. 
He  becomes  the  guide  to  Faust  and  Mephistopheles 
as  they  enter  upon  the  classic  Walpurgis  night,  taking 
thus  the  place  of  the  ignis  fatuus  who  acted  as  guide 
in  the  Walpurgis  night  of  the  first  part.  He  bursts 
his  glass  case  and  becomes  presumably  free  at  the 
moment  when  Galatea  appears,  who  like  Helen  repre¬ 
sents  the  consummation  of  Greek  beauty.  Putting 
all  these  things  together,  the  significance  of  this  un¬ 
pleasant  little  imp  becomes  tolerably  clear.  In  order 
fully  to  understand  it,  however,  we  must  go  back  for 
a  moment  to  the  boy-driver  who  guided  the  dragons 
of  Plutus  in  the  masquerade.  Of  this  personage 
Goethe  himself  tells  us  that  he  is  Euphorion.  This 


296 


ESSAYS 


statement  by  Goethe  completely  justifies,  as  I  con¬ 
ceive,  the  explanation  that  I  have  given  of  the  later 
part  of  the  masquerade,  as  representing  the  glory  and 
decline  of  Rome.  Euphorion  represents  the  poetry 
of  one  age ;  if  the  boy-driver  is  Euphorion,  he  must 
represent  the  poetry  of  another  age,  and  to  no  age 
will  the  scenes  apply  but  to  the  Augustan  age  of 
Rome.  Between  the  two  stands  Elomunculus,  whom 
analogy  might  lead  us  to  expect  to  represent  the 
poetry  of  some  intermediate  age.  This  is  especially 
the  case  when  we  consider  that  the  artistic  develop¬ 
ment  of  Greece  intervenes  between  him  and  the 
earlier  Euphorion.  What  is  represented  by  Elomun¬ 
culus  must  be,  in  my  judgment,  the  pseudo-classic 
poetry  with  its  artificialities,  as  it  existed,  for  exam¬ 
ple,  in  France.  While  Homunculus  represents  the 
spirit  of  the  Renaissance  in  general,  he  represents  in 
particular,  as  I  have  already  stated,  that  literature 
which  may  be  regarded  as  embodying  most  purely 
this  spirit,  namely,  the  classic  poetry  of  France.  The 
classic  French  drama  is  animated  by  admiration  of 
the  Greek  beauty.  It  is  a  product,  largely,  of  a  me¬ 
chanical  imitation  of  the  Greek  drama.  The  glass 
bottle  in  which  Homunculus  was  confined,  and  from 
which  he  longed  to  escape  that  he  might  really  live, 
may  represent  wittily  and  truly  the  artificial  rules 
within  which  the  spirit  of  poetry  in  the  French  tra¬ 
gedies  was  confined. 

When  we  consider  Homunculus  as  representing  in 
a  special  manner  the  French  drama  with  its  artificial 
limitations,  it  is  obvious  that  the  artificiality  and 
awkwardness  which  mark  him  are  integral  parts  of 
the  satire.  This  is  a  point  in  regard  to  which  all  other 
explanations  of  his  place  in  the  drama  fail.  The  sug- 


THE  “FAUST”  OF  GOETHE 


297 


gestion  that  Homunculus  represents  the  artificialness 
of  the  earlier  (French)  classical  literature  is  confirmed 
by  these  words  spoken  by  Homunculus  of  himself, 
lines  2271-72  : 

“Natiirlichem  genligt  das  Weltall  kaum  ; 

Was  kiinstlich  ist  verlangt  geschlossnen  Raum.” 

We  understand  thus  why  the  glass  bottle  breaks 
when  it  strikes  the  chariot  of  Galatea.  With  the 
contact  with  the  real  art  of  Greece,  and  with  sym¬ 
pathy  with  it,  the  artificiality  of  the  “  classic  unities  ” 
is  seen.  These  restraints  are  cast  aside ;  and  the 
spirit  of  poetry  attains  to  that  naturalness  to  which 
the  universe  scarcely  suffices.  The  boy-driver,  Ho¬ 
munculus,  and  Euphorion  represent  thus  respectively 
the  poetry  of  Rome,  the  artificial  classic  poetry  of  the 
later  Renaissance,  and  the  romantic  poetry  of  more 
modern  times. 

The  fact  referred  to  above,  that  the  classic  Walpur- 
gis-nacht  represents  the  struggle  of  the  embryonic 
spirit  of  modern  poetry  to  attain  to  complete  and  free 
existence,  gives  appropriateness  to  the  introduction 
of  the  discussion  between  Thales  and  Anaxagoras, 
who  represent  respectively  the  Neptunian  and  the 
Vulcanian  theories  of  the  origin  of  the  world.  The 
evolution  of  a  part  must  conform  to  the  nature  of  the 
evolution  of  the  whole  ;  and  the  principles  which  pre¬ 
sided  over  the  shaping  of  the  earth  are  the  same  that 
preside  over  the  development  of  its  literary  and 
artistic  history. 

Helen  and  Euphorion  disappear,  leaving  their  gar¬ 
ments  behind  them,  the  works  which  remain  after 
the  creative  genius  has  disappeared.  The  sprites 
that  have  taken  part  in  this  phantasmagoria  are  dis¬ 
persed,  each  seeking  that  realm  of  nature  to  which 


298  ESSAYS 

he  belongs.  We  return  to  the  plane  of  more  ordi¬ 
nary  experience. 

Faust,  by  the  help  of  Mephistopheles,  aids  the 
emperor  to  win  the  victory  over  his  rebellious  sub¬ 
jects.  The  war  which  is  presented  in  relation  to  the 
person  of  Faust  symbolizes  the  wars  which  devastated 
so  much  of  Europe,  by  means  of  which,  however,  the 
people  slowly  came  to  their  rights,  and  the  field  was 
cleared  for  the  great  altruistic  consummation. 

The  destruction  of  the  cottage  and  chapel  of  Phile¬ 
mon  and  Baucis  exhibits  the  further  clearing  of  the 
field  by  the  abolition  of  superstition  or,  if  one  chooses 
so  to  interpret  it,  of  positive  religion.  The  troubles 
of  the  aged  Faust  may  represent  the  anxieties  and 
difficulties  besetting  an  advancing  civilization  —  labor 
troubles  and  the  rest  —  such  as  we  now  know  more  of 
than  Goethe  did.  By  means  of  the  war  Faust  obtains 
the  right  to  reclaim  a  portion  of  the  sea  for  the  use  of 
man.  This  symbolizes  the  general  triumph  of  man 
over  nature,  and  here,  especially,  the  altruistic  condi¬ 
tion  of  society,  which  is  the  goal  of  history. 

As  Faust  realizes  what  he  has  accomplished,  there 
comes  a  moment  in  which  the  thought  of  the  happy 
homes  and  of  the  peaceful  and  healthful  activities  of 
life  which  should  result  from  his  labors  fills  him  with 
a  lofty  joy.  He  is  ready  to  exclaim  to  the  moment, 
“  Stay,  thou  art  so  fair.”  This  moment  of  exaltation 
forms  the  close  of  his  earthly  life.  As  he  sinks  in 
death  the  jaws  of  hell  open,  and  Mephistopheles  ad¬ 
vances  to  claim  the  soul  which  he  regards  as  his  law¬ 
ful  prize.  A  troop  of  angels,  however,  dispute  with 
him  the  victory.  They  pelt  his  attendant  demons 
with  roses,  which,  as  they  strike  them,  become  burn¬ 
ing  coals.  The  whole  scene  is  at  once  beautiful  and 


THE  “FAUST”  OF  GOETHE 


299 


grotesque.  At  last  the  angels  bear  away  in  triumph 
the  immortal  part  of  Faust.  The  play  closes  with 
songs  of  wondrous  beauty  which  represent  the  en¬ 
trance  of  Faust  into  the  heavenly  life.  Margaret 
seeks  to  be  the  helper  of  this  new-born  spirit,  and 
she  is  told  to  rise,  and  if  he  divines  her  presence,  he 
will  follow.  Goethe  somewhere  explains  that  he  uses 
in  these  closing  scenes  symbols  taken  from  the  mediae¬ 
val  church,  as  in  no  other  way  could  he  fitly  condense 
what  is  too  large  and  vague  for  dramatic  representa¬ 
tion. 

We  have  now  to  look  more  closely  at  the  signifi¬ 
cance  of  this  close  of  the  play.  We  have  to  regard 
it  in  relation  to  Faust  as  an  individual,  and  also  in  re¬ 
lation  to  that  historic  presentation  which  has  formed 
the  substance  of  so  much  of  the  second  part  of  the 
play.  In  the  one  case  we  shall  have  a  hint  of  a 
philosophy  of  life,  and  in  the  other  of  a  philosophy 
of  history. 

In  the  development  of  Faust,  considered  as  an 
individual,  we  have  three  stages.  In  the  first  he 
sought  knowledge  as  something  apart  from  life.  His 
aim  was  to  know  rather  than  to  be.  This,  as  we  have 
seen,  proved  a  failure.  In  the  next  stage  he  sought 
to  be  rather  than  to  know.  The  whole  titanic  force 
of  his  nature  was  aroused.  He  would  make  of  him¬ 
self  the  representative  of  humanity.  He  would  taste 
all  joys  and  all  sorrows.  He  would  make  of  himself 
the  centre,  and  to  him  all  things  should  be  tributary. 
This  also  proved  a  failure.  He  was  but  a  poor  frag¬ 
ment  of  humanity,  and  the  attempt  to  make  of  him¬ 
self  a  whole  brought  only  wretchedness  to  him  and 
to  that  other  being  whom  he  came  at  last  to  love 
better  than  himself.  The  unselfish  love  that  was 


3°° 


ESSAYS 


awakened  within  him,  in  part  by  the  very  tragedy 
which  blackened  his  life,  indicates  the  path  which  in 
the  third  stage  led  him  to  the  rest  which  he  sought. 
His  demand  that  all  of  life  should  become  his  was 
based  upon  the  great  fact  that  his  nature  was  poten¬ 
tially  infinite,  and  could  be  satisfied  with  no  finite 
good.  The  way  he  took  to  satisfy  this  infinite  long¬ 
ing  was,  however,  a  mistaken  one.  Not  by  making 
himself  the  representative  of  humanity  could  he  reach 
his  end,  but  by  making  himself  the  servant  of  human¬ 
ity.  He  could  not  be  the  whole,  but,  by  making 
himself  a  member  of  the  common  body,  he  could 
share  the  life  of  the  whole.  The  completion  which 
he  sought  he  found  by  making  the  joys  and  sorrows 
of  others  his  own  through  helpful  sympathy.  It  was 
this  joy  of  feeling  the  universal  life  throb  in  his  veins 
that  brought  the  solemn  peace  which  formed  the 
consummation  of  his  life.  Mephistopheles  had  been 
working  for  him  all  along,  and  when  this  peace  came 
he  thought  that  it  was  his  doing,  and  that  his  wagCr 
was  won.  He  had,  indeed,  been  instrumental  in 
accomplishing  the  result,  but  it  was  by  setting  in 
motion  forces  which  were  beyond  his  control,  and 
of  which,  indeed,  he  knew  nothing.  The  peace  that 
had  come  to  Faust  was  such  as  he  could  not  give, 
and  thus  such  as  he  could  not  take  away. 

I  have  said  that  the  second  part  of  the  “  Faust  ” 
gives  us  a  hint  of  a  philosophy  of  history.  It  does 
this  by  presenting  in  a  symbolic  way  the  more  im¬ 
portant  of  the  stages  that  mark  the  development  of 
man.  First,  as  we  have  seen,  we  have  a  state  founded 
upon  might,  which  sinks  through  the  undue  develop¬ 
ment  of  the  elements  that  had  made  its  strength. 
Wealth  and  power  become,  when  overdriven,  the 


THE  “FAUST”  OF  GOETHE  301 

sources  of  destruction.  In  this  we  could  not  fail  to 
see  the  image  of  the  glory  of  Rome  and  of  its  fall. 
Next  is  placed  before  us  the  development  of  art  and 
poetry.  Beginning  with  the  art  of  Greece,  and  end¬ 
ing  with  the  fullest  development  of  the  Romantic  lit¬ 
erature,  the  successive  types  pass  before  us ;  the 
succession  at  last  taking  the  form  of  a  romance  of 
wonderful  beauty.  We  do  not  see  the  history  of  lit¬ 
erature  and  art  in  its  essential  limitation,  it  is  true, 
but  we  see  it  in  its  transitoriness.  Genius  passes 
away,  leaving  only  its  results  to  be  cherished  by  the 
world.  The  third  great  stage  of  development  that  is 
indicated  is  that  with  which  the  play  closes,  in  which, 
as  we  have  seen,  the  individual  and  the  general  meet 
in  a  common  presentation.  It  is  the  stage  of  altruism. 
This  forms  the  culmination  of  the  history  of  the  race, 
as  it  does  of  that  of  the  individual. 

From  the  hasty  sketch  which  has  been  given  it 
will  appear  that,  as  was  indicated  at  the  opening  of 
this  essay,  in  the  play  as  a  whole  we  have  rather  a 
philosophy  of  life  than  a  study  of  the  particular  prob¬ 
lem  of  evil.  In  the  second  part,  Mephistopheles  is 
very  largely  merely  the  servant  of  Faust,  at  most  a 
principle  of  negation  in  the  sense  that  it  is  he  who 
brings  about  the  changes  which  are  necessary  for  the 
attainment  of  the  desired  result.  Now  and  then,  in¬ 
deed,  he  is  seen  in  his  more  natural  character.  This 
appears  in  the  charming  episode  of  Philemon  and 
Baucis.  This  aged  couple  had  the  charge  of  a  chapel 
which,  with  their  little  home,  occupied  land  which 
Faust  needed  for  his  great  undertaking.  They 
formed  a  foreign  element  in  the  new  world  that  he  was 
making.  They  looked  with  horror  on  his  bold  plans, 
and  refused  to  sell  to  him  the  homestead  which  they 


302 


ESSAYS 


loved.  They  represent  conservatism  in  an  age  of 
progress.  Faust  intimates  to  Mephistopheles  that 
he  wishes  to  obtain  possession  of  this  bit  of  land,  and 
the  latter  promises  to  secure  it.  Faust  is  shocked, 
however,  when  he  learns  that  his  too  willing  servant 
has  set  fire  to  the  cottage,  and  that  the  venerable  pair 
have  perished  in  the  flames.  This  whole  transaction 
may  illustrate  the  fact  that  even  the  excesses  of  revo¬ 
lution  and  the  destructive  passions  of  wicked  men 
may  help  on  the  final  triumph  of  humanity.  It  may 
also  represent  the  disappearance  of  the  world  of 
superstition  in  the  presence  of  the  forces  which  mark 
the  altruistic  and  positive  era  of  human  history.  Just 
how  much  Goethe  meant  to  include  in  this  picture  of 
superstition  is  a  matter  which  I  cannot  here  attempt 
to  discuss. 

From  this  whole  examination  it  will  appear  that 
the  unity  of  the  “  Faust,”  taken  as  a  whole,  is  ideal 
rather  than  individual  and  human.  The  Faust  of 
the  tragedy  of  Margaret  cannot  be  identified  with  the 
Faust  of  the  opening  scenes  of  the  play  ;  and  the 
Faust  of  the  second  part  cannot  be  identified  with 
either  of  the  Fausts  of  the  first.  We  may  criticise 
this  as  a  fault,  but  it  is  none  the  less  true.  If  we 
make  the  typical  drama  the  standard  to  which  the 
work  should  conform,  we  shall  find  it  full  of  faults. 
The  French  critics  were  right  when  they  pointed  out 
the  irregularities  which  mark  the  plays  of  Shake¬ 
speare.  Doubtless  these  are  often  faults,  and  some¬ 
times  very  grave  faults.  Not  till  we  are  content  to 
take  Shakespeare  as  he  is  and  let  him  speak  to  us  in 
his  own  way,  do  we  really  feel  his  strength,  and  really 
perceive  the  beauty  of  his  work.  It  is  so  with  the 
“  Faust.”  We  might  say  that  it  would  have  been 


THE  “FAUST”  OF  GOETHE 


303 


better  otherwise  ;  perhaps  it  would,  if  we  could  have 
retained  in  this  other  form  the  beauties  that  it  pos¬ 
sesses  as  it  is.  We  must  take  it,  however,  as  Goethe 
meant  it.  We  must  find  in  it  its  own  type  and  stan¬ 
dard  of  measurement.  If  we  can  discover  no  indi¬ 
vidual  unity,  we  must  be  content  with  an  ideal  unity. 
When  the  limits  of  possible  personal  experience  are 
broken  through,  we  must  be  content  with  symbolism. 
Not  till  we  take  the  poem  in  this  way  are  we  in  a  posi¬ 
tion  to  understand  it.  Not  till  this  is  done  are  we 
in  a  condition  fairly  to  judge  it.  Not  till  then  have 
we  the  right  to  ask  whether,  taken  as  it  is,  the  poem 
justifies  itself,  and  whether  it  has  a  right  to  the  ad¬ 
miration  which  it  has  received. 

If  we  are  content  to  accept  the  poem  just  as  it  is,  if 
we  see  in  it,  as  a  whole,  a  presentation,  on  the  one 
side,  of  the  history  of  the  individual  spirit  that  pos¬ 
sesses  a  germ  of  the  higher  life,  and,  on  the  other 
side,  a  presentation  of  the  movement  of  history  and 
the  grand  consummation  to  which  history  tends,  we 
may  see  faults,  indeed  ;  we  may  find  enough  to  blame 
and  to  criticise,  but  we  shall  have  a  poem  which,  both 
from  the  beauty  of  its  form  and  the  depth  of  its  sig¬ 
nificance,  is  worthy  to  stand  as  the  fittest  representa¬ 
tive  of  what  modern  or  romantic  poetry  is  striving 
to  accomplish. 


XI 


TENNYSON  AND  BROWNING  AS  SPIRITUAL 

FORCES 

Since  the  death  of  Tennyson  there  has  been  a  ten¬ 
dency  in  some  quarters  to  insist  that  he  should  be 
honored  simply  as  an  artist.  One  writer  has  expressed 
himself  with  some  warmth  in  regard  to  those  whose 
estimate  of  the  poet  is  in  any  degree  higher  than  it 
would  have  been  had  the  “  In  Memoriam  ”  not  been 
written.  “  Maud  ”  has  been  exalted  as  if  on  that,  more 
than  on  anything  else,  the  fame  of  Tennyson  ought  to 
rest.  The  meaning  of  all  this  would  seem  to  be  that 
we  should  neglect  the  substance  of  the  poet’s  work 
and  look  only  at  its  form,  because  art  exists  only  for 
art’s  sake. 

In  these  claims  there  is  a  certain  amount  of  justice. 
One  does  not  truly  enjoy  the  works  of  Tennyson  who 
has  no  appreciation  of  their  artistic  beauty,  and  in  a 
large  part  of  “  Maud  ”  the  art  of  the  poet  is  as  clearly 
manifested  as  in  any  of  his  other  works.  One  who 
cannot  take  delight  in  the  beauty  of  this  poem  can 
know  nothing  of  the  real  charm  of  Tennyson.  There 
are  few  English  poets,  perhaps  few  poets  of  any  land, 
the  music  of  whose  songs  is  as  perfect  as  that  which 
is  found  in  the  verse  of  Tennyson,  and  in  “  Maud  ” 
this  music  is  at  its  sweetest.  If  by  the  art  of  the 
poet  we  mean  the  melody  of  his  speech,  the  lightness 
of  his  touch,  the  grace  of  his  expression,  the  dainti- 


TENNYSON  AND  BROWNING 


305 


ness  of  his  conceits,  the  airiness  of  his  picturing,  then 
the  art  of  Tennyson  may  indeed  be  enjoyed  as  a  thing 
in  itself  with  very  little  regard  to  the  ideal  content  of 
his  works.  Some  of  his  earlier  poems  were  little  else 
than  music.  As  the  singer  plays  a  prelude  upon  his 
instrument  before  beginning  his  song,  so  Tennyson 
began  his  career  with  poems  that  said  nothing.  They 
were  pure  music  and  grace. 

We  may,  however,  enjoy  the  music  that  the  singer 
offers  as  a  prelude  to  his  song,  and  yet  enjoy  still 
more  the  song  itself.  We  may  delight  in  the  voice 
of  the  singer,  his  technique,  his  expression,  and  yet 
we  may  delight  in  some  of  his  songs  more  than  in 
others,  simply  for  the  reason  that  they  have  more  to 
say  to  us.  For  aught  I  know,  the  Medicean  Venus 
may  be  as  perfect,  considered  as  a  work  of  art,  as  the 
Venus  of  Milo ;  yet  we  may  take  a  higher  pleasure 
in  the  nobility  of  the  latter  than  in  the  mere  sensuous 
grace  of  the  former.  In  the  works  of  Tennyson  we 
may  enjoy  “Maud”  in  its  way  as  truly  as  we  enjoy 
“  In  Memoriam  ;  ”  but  the  enjoyment  will  be  different. 
The  one  calls  forth  pleasure  and  admiration  by  its 
sweetness  and  its  strength.  The  other,  in  parts  no  less 
musical,  appeals  to  different  and  higher  elements  of  our 
nature.  If  “  In  Memoriam  ”  is  read  merely  as  a  dis¬ 
cussion  of  certain  questions  in  regard  to  life  and  death, 
one  is  not  reading  Tennyson  ;  and  one  who  reads 
“  Maud  ”  merely  to  discuss  the  place  which  war  fills  in 
our  modern  civilization  is  not  reading  Tennyson.  The 
poet  is  first  and  always  a  poet.  One  who  translates  the 
poem  into  prose  has  touched  the  airy  bubble  and  it 
has  burst.  He  may  be  reading  a  valuable  treatise, 
but  it  is  not  poetry.  Yet  none  the  less  the  poet’s 
thought,  embodied  in  his  poetry  and  penetrated  by  it, 
may  exalt  our  hearts. 


ESSAYS 


306 

It  is  one  of  the  many  contrasts  between  Tennyson 
and  Browning  that  while  the  art  and  the  music  of  Ten¬ 
nyson  may,  as  we  have  seen,  be  considered  by  them¬ 
selves,  Browning  interests  us  primarily  in  what  he  has 
to  say.  He  is  less  thoroughly  an  artist  than  Tenny¬ 
son,  but  not  necessarily  on  that  account  less  a  poet.  I 
recall  only  one  poem  of  Browning  which  is  absolutely 
without  thought.  I  may  raise  a  clamor  of  protest 
when  I  say  that  this  one  is  “  Childe  Roland  to  the 
Dark  Tower  came.”  In  this  we  have  simply  a  picture. 
We  may  put  a  meaning  into  it,  but  to  ask  what  the 
poet  meant  by  it  is  to  appeal  to  the  fancy.  I  do  not 
say  that  the  poet  had  not  an  allegory  in  his  mind 
when  he  wrote  ;  I  simply  say  that  the  allegory  is  not 
in  the  poem.  Mendelssohn  often  had  some  definite 
scene  in  mind  which  suggested  his  music.  That  is 
nothing  to  the  listener.  The  music  must  interpret  it¬ 
self.  It  must  suggest  to  the  hearer  what  it  will,  or 
it  may  suggest  nothing  but  its  own  sweetness.  One 
might  make  an  allegory,  and  a  very  pretty  one,  out  of 
“Airy,  Fairy  Lilian,”  or,  in  fact,  out  of  almost  any 
poem.  Leaving,  however,  all  this  out  of  the  account, 
I  would  simply  recognize  the  fact  that  in  reading  the 
poems  of  Browning  the  emphasis  of  interest  is  largely 
upon  their  substance,  while  in  reading  those  of  Ten¬ 
nyson  the  emphasis  of  interest  is  often  upon  their 
form.  At  the  same  time  we  must  remember  that  the 
substance  of  Browning’s  poems  would  not  so  interest 
and  charm  us  if  it  were  not  for  the  poetic  beauty  of 
their  form  ;  while  the  poems  of  Tennyson  often  gain 
a  vast  increase  of  power  from  our  interest  in  the 
thought  that  utters  itself  in  such  melodious  verse. 

Whatever  we  may  think  of  the  part  that  poetry 
should  play  in  life,  there  can  be  no  doubt  in  regard 


TENNYSON  AND  BROWNING 


307 


to  the  part  that  it  has  played.  We  may  take  one 
side  or  the  other  on  the  question  whether  the  poet 
should  be  considered  merely  as  an  artist,  and  his 
works  be  enjoyed  merely  as  things  of  beauty,  or 
whether,  on  the  other  hand,  he  should  be  regarded 
in  any  sense  as  a  teacher,  as  a  moulder  of  our  thought 
and  an  inspirer  of  our  life ;  the  fact  remains  that 
the  poet  has,  to  a  very  large  extent,  affected  both  the 
thoughts  and  the  lives  of  men.  This  means  that  the 
poet  has,  in  point  of  fact,  been  something  more  than 
an  artist ;  that  the  substance  of  his  songs  has  been  as 
important  as  their  form.  This  has  not  been  because 
men  separated  the  substance  from  the  form.  So  to 
do  would  have  been  to  put  these  fair  creations  to 
death.  The  substance  separated  from  the  form  would 
have  lost  its  power. 

We  can  better  understand  the  influence  that  poetry 
has  possessed  over  the  hearts  and  thoughts  of  men 
by  considering  some  of  the  spheres  in  which  this 
power  has  been  chiefly  felt. 

Poetry  has  done  much  to  give  shape  to  the  religion 
of  the  world.  It  has  been  said  that  Homer  gave  to 
Greece  her  gods.  This  is  doubtless  true  in  the  sense 
that  the  Homeric  poems  did  much  to  give  permanent 
shape  to  the  Greek  mythology,  and  they  did  this  not 
in  spite  of,  but  because  of,  the  fact  that  they  were, 
and  were  felt  to  be,  merely  poems.  In  later  times 
Wordsworth  did  more  than  almost  any  one  besides  to 
give  reality  and  influence  to  the  religion  of  the  divine 
immanence.  At  the  same  time,  there  could  hardly 
be  found  examples  of  truer  poetry  than  the  lines  in 
which  Wordsworth  sings  of  the  beauty  and  sublimity 
of  the  divine  presence  in  this  outer  world.  It  is  be¬ 
cause  the  poetry  is  so  genuine,  so  perfect  simply  as 
poetry,  that  it  has  had  such  influence. 


3o8 


ESSAYS 


That  poetry  should  have  been  able  to  influence  re¬ 
ligion  in  this  way  is  what  might  have  been  naturally 
expected.  Religion  is  of  the  nature  of  poetry.  It 
implies  a  certain  divine  insight.  In  the  religion  of 
the  earlier  world  men  gave  life  to  the  things  about 
them.  The  world  in  which  they  dwelt  was  a  living 
world.  The  sun  soared  and  guided  itself  through 
the  heavens  ;  men  could  speak  to  the  trees  and  the 
mountains,  and  be  heard.  In  later  times,  by  a  simi¬ 
lar  method,  religion  reached  loftier  heights.  These 
heights  were  gained  largely  by  faith,  and  faith  rose 
upon  the  wings  of  the  imagination.  It  was  not  by 
the  arguments  of  philosophers  and  theologians  that 
these  planes  were  attained.  These  arguments  fol¬ 
lowed  after  to  give  permanence  to  what  faith  had 
won.  Faith,  however,  is  always  in  advance.  Thus 
poetry  has  lent  itself  from  the  earliest  times  to  be 
the  expression  of  religion.  Indeed,  it  was  probably 
at  first  simply  the  expression  of  religion. 

What  is  true  of  religion  is  true  also  of  morality. 
Morality  rests  not  upon  arguments  but  upon  insights. 
Theories  form  about  these  insights.  The  moral  sense 
upholds  these  theories,  and  is  not  upheld  by  them. 
Morality  thus  belongs  not  to  the  realm  of  logic  but 
to  that  of  the  imagination.  The  same  is  true  of  the 
whole  class  of  relations  to  which  poetry  has  minis¬ 
tered.  Love,  patriotism,  liberty,  all  these  have  been 
sung  by  poetry  because  they  all  bring  us  into  rela¬ 
tions  with  unseen  ideals.  They  all  belong  to  the 
realm  of  faith  and  imagination. 

It  is  interesting  to  trace  the  history  of  poetry,  and 
see  how  different  have  been  the  ideals  which  it  has 
sung  at  different  times.  Take  English  poetry  in  its 
whole  development,  and  I  think  we  shall  find  that 


TENNYSON  AND  BROWNING  309 

at  no  period  have  these  ideals  been  more  pure  and 
high  than  in  these  later  years.  This  has  not  been  at 
the  expense  of  poetic  genius.  Few  poets  have  been 
more  truly  masters  of  their  art,  or  have  been  filled 
with  a  more  truly  poetic  inspiration,  than  Tennyson 
and  Browning,  while  few  have  done  more  to  quicken 
the  higher  life.  It  is  no  matter  of  theory  how  we 
shall  regard  them.  They  were  poets,  and  at  the 
same  time  they  have  been  spiritual  forces.  They 
have  been  forces  which  cannot  be  left  out  of  the 
account  in  any  estimate  of  the  times  in  which  they 
lived.  Men  have  been  inspired  and  ennobled  by 
them.  Faith  has  been  quickened  by  them,  and  has 
been  helped  to  reach  heights  which  would  have  been 
inaccessible  without  them. 

While  these  poets  have  stimulated  religious  faith 
they  have  also  illustrated  its  methods.  They  have 
shown  in  what  manner  faith  solves  the  problems  of 
life  and  thought.  They  have  done  this  simply  for 
the  reason  that,  as  we  have  seen,  religion  and  poetry 
are  so  akin.  Both  poets  manifest  in  very  many  of 
their  most  perfect  works  the  truths  of  morality  and 
religion,  but  they  present  these  unhampered  by  for¬ 
mal  limitations.  Their  religion  is  undogmatic.  What 
they  utter  is,  for  the  most  part,  the  absolute  religion. 
If  they  use  expressions  borrowed  from  the  creeds, 
these  are  changed  and  glorified,  so  that  they  easily 
become  the  utterances  of  the  universal  religious  sen¬ 
timent.  It  is  this  intensity  of  religious  feeling,  united 
with  this  freedom  from  the  limitations  of  religious 
dogmatism,  that  makes  it  possible  for  the  expression 
of  religious  faith  to  find  a  place  among  the  very  best 
works  of  these  great  poets. 

When  we  look  more  closely  at  the  poems  of  these 


ESSAYS 


310 

masters  in  order  to  understand  the  nature  of  their 
influence  upon  the  world,  we  meet  one  of  those  strik¬ 
ing  antitheses  which  mark  all  the  relations  under 
which  Tennyson  and  Browning  may  be  regarded. 
The  antithesis  that  is  now  before  us  has  something 
of  the  surprise  of  a  paradox.  Browning  speaks  very 
rarely  in  his  own  person.  His  works  are  for  the 
most  part  either  dramas  or  dramatic  poems.  Tenny¬ 
son,  on  the  other  hand,  appears  to  be  speaking  more 
on  his  own  account.  He  seems  to  be  pouring  into 
our  ears  his  joys  and  his  sorrows,  his  fears  and  his 
hopes.  We  might  have  expected  that  Browning 
would  be  lost  among  his  creations  as  Shakespeare  is 
lost  in  the  world  that  he  created.  We  might  have 
expected  that  the  personality  of  Tennyson  would  be 
as  real  and  as  near  to  us  as  that  of  our  closest  friend. 
Just  the  opposite  of  this  is  true.  In  reading  Brown¬ 
ing  we  cannot  escape  the  sense  of  his  vigorous,  strong 
human  personality;  while  Tennyson,  despite  all  the 
intimate  confidences  to  which  he  has  admitted  us, 
remains  a  stranger.  We  have  little  sense  of  per¬ 
sonal  companionship.  The  difference  arises  from  the 
fact  that  Tennyson  is  the  greater  artist.  The  very 
perfection  of  his  art  conceals  him  from  us  even  when 
he  seems  the  nearest.  He  is  like  a  bird  singing  in  a 
thicket.  It  pours  out  all  its  little  heart  in  song,  but 
remains  invisible.  In  spite,  however,  of  the  artistic 
impersonality  of  Tennyson  we  may  find  in  his  poems 
revelations  of  a  spiritual  life  as  truly  as  in  those  of 
the  more  personal  Browning.  It  should  be  noted, 
however,  that  in  the  later  poems  of  Tennyson  this 
distinction  is  less  marked.  As  his  art  became  some¬ 
what  less  perfect,  his  personality  manifested  itself 
with  less  reserve. 


TENNYSON  AND  BROWNING  311 

Although,  as  we  have  seen,  the  moral  life  belongs 
to  the  realm  of  the  imagination,  and  thus  of  poetry, 
as  truly  as  religion  does,  yet,  for  obvious  reasons, 
morality  lends  itself  to  poetic  uses  somewhat  less 
freely  than  religion.  Although  it  belongs  on  the  one 
side  to  the  ideal  world,  on  the  other  side  it  stands  in 
direct  practical  relation  with  human  life.  Thus  while 
in  one  of  its  aspects  it  is  poetical,  in  the  other  it  may 
easily  become  prosaic.  Moral  teaching  most  natur¬ 
ally  puts  on  a  poetic  form  when  it  is  indirect ;  yet 
both  Tennyson  and  Browning  sometimes  deal  directly 
with  ethical  themes ;  and  the  poems  in  which  these 
themes  are  treated  are  among  their  most  beautiful 
creations. 

It  is  noteworthy  that  we  find  Tennyson,  in  poems 
written  not  very  far  from  the  beginning  of  his  poeti¬ 
cal  career,  facing  such  moral  questions  as  most  con¬ 
cerned  his  own  temperament  and  habits  of  life.  As 
one  must  say  continually  in  speaking  of  Tennyson,  he 
was  an  artist ;  and  the  ethical  problems  with  which 
he  dealt  so  early  are  those  which  concern  the  life  and 
the  soul  of  the  artist.  I  do  not  know  whether  we 
may  consider  “The  Lady  of  Shalott”  as  anything 
more  than  a  creation  of  the  imagination.  If  it  is,  it 
presents  a  theory  of  the  artistic  life.  This  theory  is 
very  obviously  that  the  artist  must  live  among  the 
forms  of  things,  and  not  let  himself  become  too  much 
interested  in  their  reality.  The  Lady  of  Shalott  wove 
into  her  magic  web  the  shadows  of  the  world  as  they 
were  reflected  in  the  mirror  that  hung  before  her. 
So  long  as  she  did  this,  she  rejoiced  in  her  work. 
When  she  became  “half  sick  of  shadows,”  and  was 
attracted  by  the  warm,  living,  and  loving  life  of  hu¬ 
manity,  the  curse  fell  upon  her.  If  this  is  meant  to 


312 


ESSAYS 


express  the  nature  of  the  artistic  life,  it  contains 
much  truth.  The  artist,  as  such,  deals  with  the 
shows  of  things  and  not  with  their  realities.  From 
this  truth  springs  the  great  peril  to  the  life  of  the 
artist  and  the  life  of  any  one  to  whom  beauty  makes 
a  strong  appeal.  It  is  the  temptation  to  live  in  the 
world  merely  as  a  spectator,  to  live  wholly  in  the 
shows  of  things,  and  thus  in  an  unreal  world  of  selfish 
enjoyment.  Doubtless,  Tennyson,  in  whom  the  ar¬ 
tistic  impulse  and  the  sense  of  beauty  were  stronger 
than  in  most,  felt  the  temptation  and  the  fascination 
of  this  dream-like  existence.  If  this  were  so,  in  his 
magnificent  poem,  “The  Palace  of  Art/’  we  have  a 
representation  of  the  actual  struggle  of  his  life.  Thus 
understood,  this  poem  has  besides  its  exquisite  beauty 
a  heroic  quality  which  is  inspiring.  Its  beauty  is  in¬ 
deed  exquisite.  Each  one  of  the  pictures  with  which 
the  palace  of  him  “who  did  love  beauty  only”  was 
adorned  has  the  perfection,  the  delicate  finish,  of  a 
cameo.  I  think  that  nowhere  else  can  one  find  a 
series  of  pictures  so  beautiful.  In  this  Palace  of  Art 
sat  the  soul,  as  God, 

“Holding  no  form  of  creed, 

But  contemplating  all.” 

The  same  genius  which  described  the  magnificence 
of  the  Palace  of  Art  pictured,  if  possible,  with  greater 
power  the  terrors  of  the  retribution  that  overtook  this 
soul  that  would  live  in  the  isolation  of  its  beautiful 
world. 

“A  spot  of  dull  stagnation,  without  light 
Or  power  of  movement,  seemed  my  soul, 

’Mid  onward-sloping  motions  infinite 
Making  for  one  sure  goal. 

“  A  still  salt  pool,  locked  in  with  bars  of  sand, 

Left  on  the  shore  ;  that  hears  all  night 


TENNYSON  AND  BROWNING 


313 


The  plunging  seas  draw  backward  from  the  land 
Their  moon-led  waters  white.” 

It  is  interesting  to  see  this  poet,  one  of  the  truest 
artists  and  one  of  the  most  earnest  lovers  of  beauty 
of  his  time,  thus  warning  the  world  of  the  peril  of 
loving  beauty  only. 

While  “  The  Vision  of  Sin  ”  is  less  striking  as  a 
work  of  art,  and  less  special  in  its  ethical  teaching, 
it  is  very  striking  as  a  poet’s  rebuke  of  vice.  The 
contrast  between  a  night  spent  in  sinful  revelry  and 
the  morning  in  which 

“  God  made  himself  an  awful  rose  of  dawn  ” 

is  wonderfully  impressive.  This  contrast  is  by  itself 
the  condemnation.  It  suggests  in  a  more  poetical 
form  the  derivation  that  has  been  given  to  the  Erin- 
nyes  of  the  Greeks.  It  has  been  urged  that  their 
name  is  derived  from  that  of  a  Vedic  dawn-goddess. 
This  goddess  is  considered  to  have  given  her  name 
to  the  haunting  furies  because  the  daylight  discovers 
guilt.  In  this  poem  the  dawn  brings  condemnation 
because  its  sublime  beauty  is  a  revelation  of  God 
himself. 

To  the  indirect  moral  teachings  of  Tennyson  there 
is  here  space  for  no  more  than  a  hasty  reference. 
We  have  the  self-abnegation  of  Enoch  Arden,  and, 
noblest  of  all,  the  heroism  of  the  “Idylls  of  the 
King.”  In  these  poems  sin  is  shown  in  its  beauty, 
while,  at  the  same  time,  as  it  is  beheld  in  its  relation 
to  the  lofty  ideal  of  the  king,  it  is  seen  in  its  blackest 
ugliness.  The  portrayal  of  the  contrast  reaches  its 
culmination  in  the  last  meeting  between  Arthur  and 
Guinevere,  ending  with  her  cry, 

“  We  needs  must  love  the  highest  when  we  see  it, 

Not  Lancelot,  nor  another.” 


3H 


ESSAYS 


It  is  said  that  Tennyson  designed  these  idylls  for 
an  allegory  representing  the  soul’s  search  after  God. 
As  I  have  said  in  regard  to  a  poem  of  Browning, 
such  an  idea  on  the  part  of  the  author  does  not 
change  the  nature  of  his  work.  Happily,  any  indi¬ 
cation  of  an  allegory  was  left  out  of  these  poems. 
An  allegory  they  are  not,  unless  we  choose  to  make 
them  so.  The  stories  stand  in  their  solid  reality, 
and  their  moral  teaching  is  all  the  more  impressive 
on  this  account. 

While  the  moral  teaching  of  Tennyson  may  be 
called  special  and  realistic,  that  of  Browning  is  more 
ideal  and  philosophic.  In  the  case  of  Browning,  also, 
I  must  pass  over  the  indirect  moral  bearing  of  his 
dramas  and  much  of  his  other  work,  and  glance 
merely  at  passages  which  are  a  direct  statement  of 
ethical  truth.  The  impression  that  one  gathers  from 
Browning  is  that  the  true  life  consists  rather  in  as¬ 
piration  than  in  attainment.  With  him  the  outer  life 
goes  for  comparatively  little.  One  of  the  most  ex¬ 
alted  of  the  poems  of  Browning,  which  is  also  one 
of  the  most  exalted  in  the  whole  range  of  literature, 
“  Rabbi  Ben  Ezra,”  presents  this  view  of  life  in  the 
most  striking  form  : 

“  What  I  aspired  to  be, 

And  was  not,  comforts  me.” 

“The  Statue  and  the  Bust”  presents  the  same 
view  of  life  in  a  very  impressive  way.  The  thought 
of  the  poet  is  that  it  is  better  to  sin  than  to  pass 
one’s  life  longing  to  sin  and  kept  back  merely  by 
external  considerations.  This  poem  has  been  much 
criticised  as  immoral.  In  one  aspect  of  it,  it  teaches 
the  highest  morality  —  a  morality  which  comes  very 
near  to  that  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount.  It  is 


based  upon  an  ideal  view  of  life.  Sin  is  in  the  soul, 
not  in  any  outward  act.  It  goes  further,  and  implies 
that  life,  even  if  it  be  a  bad  life,  is  better  than  ab¬ 
solute  stagnation ;  that  decision,  even  if  it  is  wrong, 
is  better  than  aimless  and  endless  indecision.  It 
utters  in  modern  form  the  cry  of  the  Hebrew  pro¬ 
phet,  “  If  the  Lord  be  God,  serve  him  ;  but  if  Baal, 
serve  him.”  By  all  means,  it  would  say,  serve  some¬ 
thing.  If  one  would  really  heed  this  teaching  of 
Browning,  and  be  driven  to  make  a  conscious  choice 
between  good  and  evil ;  above  all,  if  one  could  really 
feel  that  it  is  the  sin  in  the  heart  which  actually  de¬ 
files,  perhaps  the  poem  would  be  found  one  of  the 
most  moral  in  the  language. 

If  we  now  turn  to  the  consideration  of  the  religious 
utterances  of  these  two  great  poets,  we  shall  find  be¬ 
tween  them  a  difference  greater  than  that  which 
marks  their  ethical  teaching,  though  of  the  same 
nature.  As  religious  poets  they  possessed  much  in 
common.  They  were  in  no  special  sense  poets  of 
religion,  as  Cowper  was.  This  fact  gives  greater 
interest  and  force  to  what  they  say  of  the  spiritual 
life.  They  approached  religious  themes  in  the  same 
simple  and  natural  way  in  which  they  approached 
other  themes.  Religious  poetry,  in  any  strict  sense 
of  these  words,  constitutes  a  very  small  part  of  their 
works.  Religion  forming,  as  it  did,  a  real  part  of 
their  lives,  and  the  truths  of  religion  forming  a  part 
of  the  environment  in  the  midst  of  which  they  lived, 
they  could  not  help  giving  them  a  place  in  their 
songs.  The  place  which  such  themes  held  in  their 
works  was  thus  a  wholly  natural  one.  It  was  not  as 
in  the  works  of  Burns,  for  instance,  where  the  re¬ 
ligious  poems  seem  so  little  at  home  among  many  of 


316 


ESSAYS 


the  others.  In  Tennyson  and  Browning  there  is,  at 
the  same  time,  no  cant  or  professionalism.  There 
is  no  limitation  of  dogma.  Their  religion  is  as  un¬ 
trammeled  as  any  of  the  other  themes  of  their  song. 
They  thus  stand  in  a  very  special  sense  as  the  poets 
of  their  generation  —  a  generation  in  which  the  line 
of  separation  between  the  sacred  and  profane  is  no 
longer  drawn  so  sharply  as  of  old,  in  which  life  is 
seen  to  have  something  of  the  sacredness  of  religion, 
and  religion  to  have  all  the  naturalness  of  life. 

Despite  these  resemblances,  there  are,  as  I  have 
already  said,  great  differences.  Their  religious 
world  being  such  as  I  have  indicated,  they  divided  it 
between  them,  united  only  in  what  is  most  central 
and  essential. 

Tennyson  looked  at  religion,  as  at  ethics,  very 
largely  from  the  human  side.  What  interested  him 
chiefly  was  the  destiny  of  man.  Now  and  then  his 
spirit  rises  in  adoration ;  but  for  the  most  part  God 
is  regarded  as  the  supreme  power  in  the  universe,  to 
whom  we  may  trust  to  fulfill  the  promise  which  is  im¬ 
planted  in  our  souls.  He  had  faith  that  this  promise 
would  be  fulfilled.  This  faith  was  not  always  clear 
and  strong.  It  did  not  soar  with  untroubled  flight 
up  into  the  serene  heavens.  It  was  a  faith  that 
struggled  with  doubts  and  difficulties.  Few  have 
felt  these  difficulties  more  keenly  than  Tennyson. 
There  was  no  disturbing  influence  of  the  time,  no 
questioning  of  doubt,  no  protest  of  unbelief  that  was 
unfamiliar  to  him.  These  doubts  and  questionings 
approached  him  not  merely  from  without.  They 
had  a  home  in  his  own  heart,  and  raised  their  clamor 
of  opposition  against  the  utterances  of  faith.  This 
is  one  of  the  great  sources  of  the  power  of  Tennyson 


TENNYSON  AND  BROWNING 


317 


in  stimulating  the  spiritual  life.  There  is  no  diffi¬ 
culty  with  which  he  has  not  himself  fought  and  which 
he  has  not  overcome. 

The  poem  of  “  The  Two  Voices  ”  is  a  type  of 
Tennyson’s  utterances  upon  this  theme.  This  is 
one  of  his  most  melodious  poems.  Its  sweetness  is 
wonderful.  The  voice  which  urges  despair  is  not  that 
of  the  earthquake  or  the  wind.  It  is  a  still,  small 
voice  that  sings  its  way  into  the  innermost  recesses 
of  the  heart.  Its  reasoning  is  subtle.  If  one  of  its 
arguments  seems  met,  it  urges  another  that,  if  not 
stronger,  has  an  appearance  of  greater  strength.  The 
soul  that  it  is  assailing  finds  itself  entangled  in  soph¬ 
istries  from  which  it  cannot  free  itself,  and  is  ready 
to  yield.  Suddenly  rescue  appears  from  a  source 
whence  it  could  have  been  least  expected  : 

“  I  ceased,  and  sat  as  one  forlorn. 

Then  said  the  voice,  in  quiet  scorn, 

‘  Behold,  it  is  the  Sabbath  morn.’ 

t 

“  And  I  arose,  and  I  released 
The  casement,  and  the  light  increased 
With  freshness  in  the  dawning  east. 

“  Like  softened  airs  that  blowing  steal 
When  meres  begin  to  uncongeal, 

The  sweet  church  bells  began  to  peal. 

“  On  to  God’s  house  the  people  pressed  : 

Passing  the  place  where  each  must  rest, 

Each  entered  like  a  welcome  guest.” 

Among  the  rest  walked  a  little  family  —  the  father, 
the  mother,  and  their  child. 

“  These  three  made  unity  so  sweet 
My  frozen  heart  began  to  beat, 

Remembering  its  ancient  heat. 


318 


ESSAYS 


“  I  blessed  them,  and  they  wandered  on. 

I  spoke,  but  answer  came  there  none  : 

The  dull  and  bitter  voice  was  gone.” 

In  its  place  came  a  second  voice  that  breathed  of 
hope  and  cheer : 

“  ‘  What  is  it  thou  knowest,  sweet  voice,’  I  cried. 

‘  A  hidden  hope,’  the  voice  replied.” 

This,  then,  was  the  struggle  and  the  victory.  The 
victory  was  not  won  by  force  of  logic.  It  was  a 
poet’s  victory.  The  nature  was  simply  recalled  to 
health  and  to  a  healthful  relation  with  the  world 
about  it.  It  felt  itself  in  the  presence  of  love  and 
faith.  The  answer  of  cheer  was  very  vague.  It  was 
“  a  hidden  hope.”  It  was  a  victory  of  love  and  faith, 
of  faith  in  love. 

This  is  the  answer  that  the  poet  made  to  the  ques¬ 
tions  of  the  time  that  pressed  with  as  much  force 
upon  him  as  upon  any  other  child  of  the  century.  As 
I  have  said  before,  religion  is  of  the  nature  of  poetry. 
The  poet  thus  exemplifies  the  triumph  of  faith.  It 
does  not  conquer  by  solving  all  difficulties,  by  making 
a  demonstration  of  the  truth  of  that  which  it  be¬ 
lieves.  Its  victory  is  positive,  not  negative.  It  is  trust 
in  the  highest  and  the  best.  It  is  not  without  its 
weapons  of  argument,  but  its  strength  is  in  its  har¬ 
mony  with  the  positive  life  of  the  world.  Because 
the  victory  which  is  celebrated  in  “  The  Two  Voices  ” 
was  one  of  faith  and  not  of  demonstration,  the  battle 
had  to  be  fought  over  and  over  again,  but  always  with 
the  same  result.  In  the  poem  called  “  Vastness,” 
which  is  in  the  last  volume  of  his  works  that  was 
published  while  Tennyson  was  still  alive,  are  painted 
with  more  repulsive  details  the  evils  of  the  world 
which  would  seem  to  crush  out  the  possibility  of 


TENNYSON  AND  BROWNING 


3i9 


faith.  No  other  outcome  seems  possible  to  our  ex¬ 
istence  than  that  we  should  be 

“  Swallowed  in  vastness,  lost  in  silence,  drowned  in  the  deeps  of  a 
meaningless  past.” 

Suddenly  the  poet  breaks  off,  and  exclaims  : 

“  Peace,  let  it  be  !  for  I  loved  him,  and  love  him  forever  :  the  dead 
are  not  dead,  but  alive.” 

The  poetry  of  this  composition  is  greatly  inferior  to 
that  of  “  The  Two  Voices  ;  ”  but  the  triumph  of  faith 
is  accomplished  in  the  same  way.  It  is  faith  in  love 
that  is  stronger  than  all  doubt. 

“  In  Memoriam  ”  is,  on  the  whole,  a  song  of  con¬ 
fidence  ;  but  in  this  also  the  old  enemy  has  some¬ 
times  to  be  met,  and  it  is  always  conquered  by  the 
same  weapon.  The  victory  is  still  one  of  faith.  In 
the  magnificent  Proem  we  read  : 

“  We  have  but  faith  :  we  cannot  know ; 

For  knowledge  is  of  things  we  see  ; 

And  yet  we  trust  it  comes  from  thee 
A  beam  in  darkness.” 

Later  in  the  poem,  after  facing  some  of  the  darker 
problems  of  existence,  the  poet  cries  : 

“  I  falter  where  I  firmly  trod, 

And  falling  with  my  weight  of  cares 
Upon  the  great  world’s  altar-stairs 
That  slope  through  darkness  up  to  God, 

“  I  stretch  lame  hands  of  faith,  and  grope, 

And  gather  dust  and  chaff,  and  call 
To  what  I  feel  is  Lord  of  all, 

And  faintly  trust  the  larger  hope.” 

The  confidence  of  the  poet  in  the  future  of  man 
upon  the  earth  is  similar  to  his  faith  in  the  future 
life  of  the  spirit.  It  is  held  with  a  distinct  percep¬ 
tion  of  all  the  difficulties  in  its  way.  No  one  saw 


320 


ESSAYS  ' 


more  clearly  than  Tennyson  the  crimes  and  the  mis¬ 
eries  of  the  world.  So  clearly  does  he  see  them  that 
when  his  later  poem  on  “  Locksley  Hall  ”  was  pub¬ 
lished,  it  was  received,  one  might  almost  say,  with  a 
howl  of  indignation  —  an  indignation  which,  now 
that  we  look  calmly  upon  it,  we  cannot  fully  under¬ 
stand.  In  one  respect  there  is  a  deeper  insight  than 
is  found  in  the  earlier  poem.  That  was  written  with 
the  sense  of  the  aristocracy  of  the  ideal  which  is  not 
infrequently  felt  by  the  young  who  are  eager  for 
nobility  of  life.  Their  ideal  is  something  abstract. 
Its  inspiration  is  somewhat  vague,  though  real.  They 
are  sometimes  tempted  to  have  a  certain  scorn  of  the 
humbler  virtues  that  are  practiced  by  those  who  seem 
to  lead  merely  plodding  lives.  The  insight  into  the 
beauty  of  lowly  heroism  had  been  brought  by  the 
sixty  years  that  had  passed,  and,  if  they  had  brought 
nothing  else,  they  had  not  been  lived  in  vain.  The 
poet  had  not  lost  his  faith  in  the  future,  even  if  the 
grand  consummation  seemed  farther  off  than  he  had 
once  dreamed.  “Forward,  then,”  he  cried,  as  of  old, 
though  he  was  forced  to  add  : 

“  But  still  remember  how  the  course  of  time  will  swerve, 

Crook  and  turn  upon  itself  in  many  a  backward-streaming  curve.” 

The  fact  that  his  religious  faith  reached  its  triumph 
only  after  fierce  struggle  may  account,  in  part  at 
least,  for  the  passionate  manner  in  which  it  was  held. 
He  is  quoted  as  once  exclaiming,  with  reference  to 
faith  in  immortality,  that  if  God  made  the  earth  and 
put  this  hope  and  passion  into  us,  it  must  foreshow 
the  truth.  If  it  were  not  true,  he  added,  “  I ’d  shake 
my  fist  in  his  almighty  face,  and  tell  Him  that  I 
cursed  Him.” 1  This  has  been  called  blasphemy, 

1  The  Nineteenth  Century ,  January,  1893,  p.  169. 


TENNYSON  AND  BROWNING 


321 


but  his  reply  would  be  in  the  lines  which  occur  in 
the  poem  called  “  Despair  :  ” 

“  Blasphemy  !  true  !  I  have  scared  you  pale  with  my  scandalous  talk, 
But  the  blasphemy  to  my  mind  lies  all  in  the  way  that  you  walk.” 

He  was  indignant  with  those  who  drive  men  into 
unbelief  by  false  pictures  of  God  ;  and  although  he 
had  sung 

“  There  lives  more  faith  in  honest  doubt, 

Believe  me,  than  in  half  the  creeds,” 

he  was  indignant  with  aggressive  unbelief  that  is  no 
longer  doubt.  Positivism  and  atheism  he  felt  must 
necessarily  be  sources  of  immorality.  Thus  in  his 
“Promise  of  May  ”  we  find  the  hero  embodying  a 
materialism  that  led  him  into  cruel  crime  and  sicken¬ 
ing  meanness. 

In  all  this  I  know  that  I  have  made  too  prominent 
the  aspect  of  Tennyson’s  poetry  which  has  been 
under  consideration.  There  is  no  space  to  contem¬ 
plate  the  serene  heights  of  faith  where  he  sometimes 
loved  to  rest.  I  have  described  merely  the  toilsome 
path  by  which  these  heights  were  reached. 

When  we  turn  to  the  poems  of  Browning  we  find 
little  that  is  akin  to  the  aspects  of  Tennyson’s  poetry 
that  we  have  been  considering.  While  religion  was 
to  Tennyson  so  largely  a  matter  of  faith  in  immor¬ 
tality,  with  Browning  it  was  chiefly  joy  in  the  divine 
presence.  Immortality  he  took  for  granted,  with  a 
serene  confidence  that  left  no  place  for  the  struggles 
and  the  passionate  eagerness  that  are  so  marked  in 
the  poems  of  Tennyson.  Browning  simply  rejoices 
in  the  light  that  the  thought  of  immortality  sheds 
upon  the  strifes  and  imperfections  of  our  human  life. 
He  felt  that  it  was 


322 


ESSAYS 


“  God’s  task  to  make  the  heavenly  period 
Perfect  the  earthen,” 

and  he  could  leave  the  matter  in  His  hands.  Hardly 
anywhere  else  does  the  word  God  occur  with  such 
vast  suggestion  as  it  carries  often  in  Browning’s 
poems.  I  recall  but  one  passage  in  Tennyson  that 
may  be  compared  in  this  respect  with  the  many  such 
utterances  in  Browning.  It  is  the  one  that  I  have 
already  quoted  from  “  The  Vision  of  Sin,” 

“  God  made  himself  an  awful  rose  of  dawn.” 

This  is  wholly  in  the  spirit  of  Browning.  In  Brown¬ 
ing’s  poetry  the  divine  presence  appears  to  enwrap 
our  human  life  as  the  sky  and  the  sea  enwrap  the 
earth.  In  the  dramatic  poems,  of  course,  all  kinds 
of  people  have  their  say  ;  but  so  far  as  the  spiritual 
life  of  the  poet  seems  to  reveal  itself,  we  find  no  hint 
of  doubt  and  struggle.  The  song  of  Pippa, 

“  God ’s  in  his  Heaven, 

All ’s  right  with  the  world,” 

suggests  the  music  to  which  the  spirit  of  the  great 
singer  moved. 

Though  Browning  seems  not  to  have  needed  to 
convince  himself  of  the  truth  which  his  faith  so 
gladly  held,  yet  he  did  sometimes  strive  to  remove 
the  doubts  of  others.  Of  this  spiritual  teaching  his 
“  Saul  ”  is  the  most  magnificent  example.  In  this 
poem  David  appeals  to  Saul  with  the  same  kind  of 
argument  which  Tennyson  addresses  to  himself  : 

“  Do  I  find  love  so  full  in  my  nature,  God’s  ultimate  gift, 

That  I  doubt  his  own  love  can  compete  with  it  ?  ” 

Over  and  over  again  do  we  find  expressed  by  Brown¬ 
ing,  as  we  have  found  expressed  by  Tennyson,  this 
faith  in  love  as  the  supreme  revelation.  It  is  the 


TENNYSON  AND  BROWNING 


323 


faith  of  the  poet,  and  it  is  the  faith  of  religion  as  well. 
It  is  faith  in  the  highest  as  of  necessity  the  truest. 

Both  poets  believed  in  the  possibility  and  promise 
of  human  life.  Here,  also,  while  the  confidence  of 
Tennyson  was  burdened  by  the  sense  of  human  suf¬ 
fering  and  sin,  that  of  Browning  resembled  the  clear 
insight  of  his  religious  faith.  Nowhere  else,  save  in 
the  Ninth  Symphony  of  Beethoven,  can  we  find  such 
jubilant  outburst  of  praise  of  the  joy  of  living  as  in 
his  “  Saul.”  Here,  as  elsewhere,  the  doubt  that  with 
Tennyson  speaks  from  within  speaks  from  without, 
and  is  overpowered  by  the  outpouring  praise  of  the 
gladness  of  life  in  which  the  earthly  and  the  heavenly 
form  parts  of  one  complete  whole. 

As  we  have  seen,  Tennyson  and  Browning  had  a 
special  interest  in  different  aspects  of  religion.  Ten¬ 
nyson  clung  to  the  hope  of  personal  immortality,  while 
Browning,  assuming  this,  rejoiced  chiefly  in  the  di¬ 
vine  presence  in  the  world.  There  is  a  passage  in 
the  works  of  each  in  which  this  relation  appears  to 
be  reversed.  They  are  the  passages  in  which  the  two 
poets  look  forward  to  the  experience  of  death.  With 
Browning  the  thought  of  death,  when  he  wrote  his 
poem,  was  of  something  comparatively  remote ;  Ten¬ 
nyson’s  poem  refers  to  something  that  might  soon 
become  a  reality.  I  refer  to  the  “Prospice”  of 
Browning,  and  the  “  Crossing  the  Bar  ”  of  Tennyson. 
In  his  splendid  poem  the  one  thing  to  which  Brown¬ 
ing  looks  forward  with  passionate  eagerness  is  the 
meeting  again  with  her  who  had  so  recently  left  him. 
Such  human  interest  finds  a  minor  place  in  the  poem 
of  Tennyson.  The  poem  reaches  its  culmination  in 
the  cry, 

“  I  hope  to  see  my  Pilot  face  to  face 
When  I  have  crossed  the  bar.  ” 


324 


ESSAYS 


Of  course  the  circumstances  under  which  each  wrote 
affected  more  or  less  his  work  ;  yet  the  difference  in 
regard  to  the  point  of  interest  that  is  named  may 
naturally  have  grown  out  of  the  mental  habits  of  each 
to  which  I  have  referred.  To  Browning  the  divine 
presence  was  a  reality.  In  regard  to  this,  death 
could  make  little  difference,  “  for  what  a  man  seeth 
why  doth  he  yet  hope  for  ?  ”  Death  could  affect 
only  that  which  is  changeable.  It  could  reunite  the 
broken  links  of  human  fellowship.  In  the  case  of 
Tennyson  this  was  different.  He  is  reported  as  once 
saying  :  “  My  greatest  wish  is  to  have  a  clearer  vision 
of  God.”  1  This  is  the  wish  that  this  poem  expresses. 
The  very  fact  that  the  strongest  impulse  in  his  reli¬ 
gious  life  had  been  the  hope  of  a  future  for  himself 
and  for  all  would  lead  him  to  emphasize  in  the 
thought  of  this  future  that  grand  element  of  the  re¬ 
ligious  consciousness  which  had  been  in  his  case  less 
marked. 

In  regard  to  their  final  and  highest  thought  of 
religion  these  two  great  poets  were  at  one.  In  their 
highest  expressions  they  recognized  God,  not  as  a 
being  far  off  and  foreign,  but  as  immanent  in  the 
world. 

Near  the  close  of  “  In  Memoriam  ”  the  poet  ex¬ 
claims  to  his  vanished  friend  : 

“  Behold,  I  dream  a  dream  of  good, 

And  mingle  all  the  world  with  thee. 

“Thy  voice  is  on  the  rolling  air; 

I  hear  thee  where  the  waters  run  ; 

Thou  standest  in  the  rising  sun, 

And  in  the  setting  thou  art  fair. 

“ My  love  involves  the  love  before; 

My  love  is  vaster  passion  now ; 

1  The  Nineteenth  Century ,  January,  1893,  P-  169. 


TENNYSON  AND  BROWNING 


325 


Though  mixed  with  God  and  Nature  thou, 

I  seem  to  love  thee  more  and  more.” 

This  might  imply  a  loss  of  personality  in  his  departed 
friend  and  an  absorption  into  the  absolute  life  of  na¬ 
ture.  All  the  poet’s  later  utterances,  no  less  than 
his  earlier,  forbid  this  interpretation.  The  divine  life 
is  now  the  sphere  in  which  his  friend  lived.  This 
life  penetrated  the  world.  Nature  itself  was  its 
manifestation.  The  life  of  his  friend,  ensphered  in 
this  divine  life,  he  felt  to  share  something  of  this 
universality : 

“  Far  off  thou  art,  but  ever  nigh  ; 

I  have  thee  still,  and  I  rejoice ; 

I  prosper,  circled  with  thy  voice ; 

I  shall  not  lose  thee  though  I  die.” 

Thus  we  have  the  expression  of  a  profound  sense 
of  the  immanence  of  God  in  the  world,  though  this  is 
for  the  moment  at  least  regarded  merely  as  furnishing 
the  possibility  of  a  new  and  larger  relationship  to  the 
departed  friend.  In  “The  Higher  Pantheism”  the 
thought  of  the  divine  immanence  is  dwelt  upon  with 
direct  reference  to  the  relation  of  man  to  this  indwell¬ 
ing  and  encompassing  spirit  : 

“  Speak  to  Him  thou,  for  He  hears,  and  Spirit  with  Spirit  can  meet, 
Closer  is  He  than  breathing,  and  nearer  than  hands  and  feet.” 

But  at  the  close  the  poet  falls  back  into  the  contra¬ 
diction  between  life  as  it  is  and  its  imagined  possi¬ 
bilities  : 

“  And  the  ear  of  man  cannot  hear,  and  the  eye  of  man  cannot  see, 
But  if  we  could  see  and  hear,  this  Vision,  were  it  not  He  ?” 

The  poem  in  which  Browning  expresses  in  the 
most  striking  manner  the  thought  of  the  divine  im¬ 
manence  is  the  Epilogue  to  the  “  Dramatis  Personae.” 
In  this  are  portrayed  three  stages  in  the  development 


326 


ESSAYS 


of  religion.  The  poet  presents  first  a  picture  of  the 
worship  of  a  transcendent  deity  in  the  splendid  He¬ 
brew  ritual  : 

“  When  the  singers  lift  up  their  voice, 

And  the  trumpets  made  endeavor, 

Sounding,  ‘  In  God  rejoice  !  ’ 

Saying  ‘  In  Him  rejoice 

Whose  mercy  endureth  forever  !  * 

“  Then  the  temple  filled  with  a  cloud, 

Even  the  House  of  the  Lord ; 

Porch  bent  and  pillar  bowed  ; 

For  the  presence  of  the  Lord, 

In  the  glory  of  His  cloud, 

Had  filled  the  House  of  the  Lord.” 

In  the  second  scene,  as  it  may  be  called,  is  pictured 
the  sad  effect  of  modern  criticism  upon  religious  faith. 
The  presence  of  Christ  in  the  world  is  pictured  as  a 
star  that  had  come  to  the  earth  and  opened,  reveal¬ 
ing  the  actual  presence  of  God  : 

“We  gazed  our  fill 

With  upturned  faces  on  as  real  a  Face 

That,  stooping  from  grave  music  and  mild  fire, 

Took  in  our  homage.” 

Driven  away  by  critical  unbelief,  the  star  had  closed 
and  retreated,  leaving  the  earth  desolate,  and  man 
sadly  recognizing  himself  as  the  highest  in  the  uni¬ 
verse. 

In  the  third  scene  is  recognized  the  divinity  that  is 
immanent  in  the  world  : 

“  Why,  where ’s  the  need  of  Temple,  when  the  walls 
O’  the  earth  are  that  ?  What  use  for  swells  and  falls 
From  Levites’  choir,  Priests’  cries,  and  trumpet-calls  ? 

“That  one  Face,  far  from  vanish  rather  grows, 

Or  decomposes  but  to  recompose, 

Become  my  universe  that  feels  and  knows  !  ” 


TENNYSON  AND  BROWNING 


327 


In  comparing  Tennyson  and  Browning  we  have 
found  that  Tennyson  represents  the  realistic  and 
human  aspect  of  ethics  and  religion,  while  Browning 
represents  rather  their  ideal  aspect.  In  considering 
this  contrast,  different  persons  may  be  tempted  to 
exalt  one  of  these  poets  above  the  other.  To  some 
the  faith  which  battles  with  doubt  and  triumphs  may 
seem  the  noblest.  To  others  the  faith  that  dwells  in 
serene  peace  may  seem  the  most  exalted.  Why  need 
we  seek  to  give  to  one  or  the  other  such  preeminence  ? 
Each  had  his  special  work,  and  each  performed  it 
nobly.  Let  us  rather  rejoice  that  these  great  poets 
have  together  presented  the  higher  life  in  its  full¬ 
ness  ;  that  together  they  have  done  that  which  no 
one  singer  could  have  accomplished. 


XII 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  BROWNING 

When  the  philosophy  of  Browning  is  spoken  of, 
the  words  may  seem  to  some  to  imply  either  that 
Browning  was  a  philosopher  and  not  a  poet,  or  else 
that  he  being  a  poet  is  to  be  treated  as  if  he  were 
a  philosopher ;  that  is,  he  is  to  be  forced  into  the 
likeness  of  something  that  he  is  not.  The  manner 
in  which  the  works  of  Browning  have  sometimes 
been  studied  might  make  this  suggestion  probable. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  students  of  Browning 
have  sometimes  drawn  from  his  works  meanings  that 
they  have  first  introduced  into  them.  Sometimes 
the  poems  have  been  so  analyzed,  the  thought  so 
straightened  out,  its  stages  so  numbered  and  ex¬ 
pounded  that  it  would  hardly  enter  the  head  of  the 
reader  to  imagine  that  it  was  a  poem  and  not  rather 
an  abstruse  treatise  that  he  was  working  over.  At 
least,  this  treatment  suggests  the  study  of.  some 
foreign  author  that  must  be  translated  by  the  aid  4 
of  grammar  and  dictionary.  Some  readers  can  go 
through  all  this  without  harm  ;  just  as  some  school¬ 
boys  may  toil  through  grammars  and  dictionaries, 
syntax  and  etymology,  may  take  their  author  all  to 
pieces,  and  then  can  put  him  together  again,  or  rather 
can  see  him  stand  forth  in  his  original  freshness  and 
beauty,  as  Pelias  was  expected  to  arise  in  renewed 
youth  after  having  been  cut  to  pieces  and  boiled. 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  BROWNING  329 


The  daughters  of  Pelias  were  disappointed,  however ; 
and  many  schoolboys  have,  I  fear,  as  the  result  of 
their  work,  only  a  lot  of  verbs  and  nouns  and  rules 
of  syntax.  So  I  fear  that  for  some  Browning  must 
remain  nothing  other  than  a  preacher  or  a  philoso¬ 
pher  ;  whereas  he  should  be  seen  first  and  last,  if  not 
always,  between  the  two,  a  poet.  I  confess  that  it  is 
sometimes  a  little  difficult  so  to  see  him.  In  some 
of  his  later  poems  the  metaphysician  seems  some¬ 
times  to  get  the  better  of  the  poet  for  a  while,  though 
the  poet  comes  out  triumphant  at  last. 

If  we  have,  for  the  moment,  to  consider  Browning 
as  a  philosopher,  let  us  then  not  forget  that  he  is 
first  of  all  a  poet.  Indeed,  there  is  no  necessary 
conflict  between  philosophy  and  poetry.  Every  man 
has  his  philosophy — his  philosophy  of  life.  Every 
poet  is  a  man,  and  thus  has  his  philosophy  of  life, 
and  we  should  naturally  expect  that  this  would  show 
itself  to  some  extent  in  his  works.  Sometimes,  in¬ 
deed,  the  philosophy  manifested  in  the  works  of  an 
author  is  too  superficial  and  obvious  to  be  made  a 
matter  of  thought.  Sometimes  his  compositions  are 
the  mere  play  of  the  author,  and  he  puts  little  of 
himself  into  them.  He  can,  however,  rarely  conceal 
himself  for  long.  Few  can  so  truly  as  Shakespeare 
create  a  world  in  which  the  presence  of  the  creator 
is  hardly  felt.  Browning  was  also  a  dramatic  poet, 
but  the  world  of  his  creation  was  a  smaller  one,  and 
rightly  or  wrongly  we  feel  that  we  gain  from  it  a  real 
impression  of  the  personality  of  its  author. 

To  see  more  clearly  the  possibility  of  a  blending  of 
poetry  with  philosophy,  we  need  to  consider  briefly 
what  poetry  is  and  what  philosophy  is.  It  is  sufficient 
for  our  present  purpose  to  say  that  for  poetry  is 


330 


ESSAYS 


needed  the  enlivening  touch  of  the  imagination.  This 
does  not  mean  that  where  this  touch  is  present  the 
product  is  always  what  we  call  poetry ;  but  simply 
that  there  is  no  poetry  without  it.  It  can  be  said, 
however,  that  where  there  is  this  touch  of  the  imagi¬ 
nation,  the  result  is  akin  to  poetry  and  differs  from 
it,  if  at  all,  only  in  form.  It  may  be  said  further  that 
there  is  nothing  which  the  force  of  the  imagination 
may  not  transform  to  poetry.  By  the  use  of  the 
word  transformation  I  do  not  mean  to  imply  that 
truth  is  necessarily  sacrificed  to  poetry.  It  is  some¬ 
times  so  sacrificed.  In  this  case,  however,  we  are 
apt  to  speak  of  fancy  rather  than  of  imagination, 
though  the  two  are  really  different  forms  of  the  same 
power.  Even  fancy  plays  to  a  certain  extent  about 
nature,  adapts  itself  to  a  certain  extent  to  the  natural 
object,  and  follows  lines  indicated  by  it.  Imagination 
has  a  power  of  vision  as  well  as  of  creation.  It  sees 
the  universal  in  and  through  the  individual.  In  this 
it  is  akin  to  science  and  philosophy.  It  differs  from 
them  in  the  fact  that  while  they  recognize  intellec¬ 
tually  the  universal  in  connection  with  the  individual, 
the  imagination  sees  and  feels  it.  Peter  Bell  stands 
as  the  ideal  of  the  prosaic,  literal  man.  Of  him  we 
read : 

“  A  primrose  by  a  river’s  brim, 

A  yellow  primrose  was  to  him, 

And  it  was  nothing  more.” 

Why  was  not  Peter  Bell  right  ?  Why  must  we 
not  admit  that  he  saw  things  as  they  were,  and  that 
if  the  poet  saw  what  he  did  not  see,  what  was  thus 
seen  was  fictitious  and  unreal.  What  more,  then, 
did  the  poet  see  ?  If  I  were  a  poet  I  should  be  better 
able  to  say.  For  one  thing,  the  poet  must  have  felt 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  BROWNING 


331 


that  the  flower  did  not  stand  by  itself,  but  that  it  was 
an  expression  of  the  heart  of  nature,  that  the  univer¬ 
sal  life  blossomed  in  it.  He  might  also  have  seen 
in  it  a  symbol  of  I  know  not  what  gracious  and 
graceful  things.  Sweet  and  gentle  associations  may 
have  gathered  about  it  for  him.  The  flower  may 
have  seemed  to  him  something  akin  to  himself,  only 
much  more  pure  and  simple.  All  this,  or  nearly  all, 
is  as  real  as  that  which  was  seen  by  Peter  Bell.  The 
imagination  created  something,  but  it  saw  more  than 
it  created. 

In  the  Prologue  to  Asolando,  Browning  compares 
his  present  with  his  past : 

“  The  poet’s  age  is  sad  :  for  why  ? 

In  youth,  the  natural  world  could  show 
No  common  object  but  his  eye 

At  once  involved  with  alien  glow  — 

His  own  soul’s  iris  bow. 

“  And  now  a  flower  is  just  a  flower ; 

Man,  bird,  beast  are  but  beast,  bird,  man  — 

Simply  themselves,  uncinct  by  dower 
Of  dyes  which,  when  life’s  day  began, 

Round  each  in  glory  ran.” 

I  suppose  that  the  poem  of  Peter  Bell  was  not  in 
Browning’s  mind  when  he  wrote  these  lines,  but  it  is 
the  Peter  Bell  attitude  that  the  lines  picture ;  yet 
I  do  not  believe  that  Browning  assumed  it  to  any¬ 
thing  like  the  degree  which  they  imply.  However 
this  may  be,  Browning  proceeds  to  justify  it  : 

“  Friend,  did  you  need  an  optic  glass, 

Which  were  your  choice  ?  A  lens  to  drape 
In  ruby,  emerald,  chrysopras, 

Each  object  —  or  reveal  its  shape 
Clear  outlined,  past  escape  ?  ” 

How  gladly  would  Peter  Bell  have  so  responded  to 


332 


ESSAYS 


Wordsworth  if  he  had  had  the  wit.  But  let  us  follow 
Browning  further : 

“  How  many  a  year,  my  Asolo, 

Since  —  one  step  just  from  sea  to  land  — 

I  found  you,  loved  yet  feared  you  so  — 

For  natural  objects  seemed  to  stand 
Palpably  fire-clothed  !  No  — 

“No  mastery  of  mine  o’er  these  ! 

Terror  with  beauty,  like  the  Bush 
Burning  but  unconsumed.  Bend  knees, 

Drop  eyes  to  earthward  !  Language  ?  Tush  I 
Silence,  ’t  is  awe  decrees. 

“  And  now  ?  The  lambent  flame  is  —  where  ? 

Lost  from  the  naked  world :  earth,  sky, 

Hill,  vale,  tree,  flower  —  Italia’s  rare 
O’er-running  beauty  crowds  the  eye  — 

But  flame  ?  The  Bush  is  bare. 

“  Hill,  vale,  tree,  flower  —  they  stand  distinct, 

Nature  to  know  and  name.  What  then? 

A  Voice  spoke  thence  which  straight  unlinked 
Fancy  from  fact :  see,  all ’s  in  ken  : 

Has  once  my  eyelid  winked  ? 

“  No,  for  the  purged  ear  apprehends 

Earth’s  import,  not  the  eye  late  dazed. 

The  Voice  said,  ‘  Call  my  works  thy  friends! 

At  Nature  dost  thou  shrink  amazed? 

God  is  it  who  transcends.’  ” 

It  is  as  I  said.  Poor  Peter  Bell  is  deserted  by  the 
poet  in  whom  he  seemed  to  find  a  defender.  In  this 
last  verse  the  poetic  spirit  rises  and  leaves  him  with 
his  primrose  that  was  nothing  else.  It  suggests  that 
though  one  may  see  the  natural  object  just  as  it  is, 
the  flower  just  as  a  flower,  yet  through  it  one  may 
discern  the  presence  of  nature  and  of  God.  At  the 
same  time,  the  poem  I  have  just  read  marks  a  descent 
from  poetry  towards  prose,  for  to  prose  Browning 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  BROWNING 


333 


could  never,  or  at  most  very  rarely,  quite  descend. 
It  does  illustrate,  as  we  shall  see  more  clearly  later, 
the  difference  between  Browning’s  later  and  his  ear¬ 
lier  works  ;  and  I  contend  that  what  Browning  saw  in 
his  youth,  when  the  objects  of  nature  shone  with  an 
iridescent  glow  ;  what  he  saw  in  his  first  visit  to  Italy, 
when  all  the  associations  of  history  and  romance,  of 
poetry  and  art  were  concentrated  into  a  single  mo¬ 
ment,  and,  kindled  by  his  youthful  enthusiasm,  played 
about  each  thing  of  beauty  like  a  lambent  flame  — 
this,  I  contend,  was  more  true  than  the  clear  outlines 
which  his  more  mature  and  custom-dimmed  gaze 
beheld. 

Since  poetry  depends  upon  the  method  of  treat¬ 
ment  rather  than  upon  the  nature  of  the  material 
treated,  there  would  seem  to  be  no  reason  why  the 
material  which  enters  into  philosophy  should  not 
assume  the  poetic  form.  Some  of  the  early  philo¬ 
sophical  systems  were  in  fact  expressed  in  poetry. 
Heraclitus  and  others  among  the  early  Greek  philoso¬ 
phers  were  poets.  Nothing  might  seem  more  foreign 
to  poetry  than  the  view  of  the  world  and  its  creation 
that  was  held  by  Lucretius ;  and  yet  his  great  poem 
still  occupies  a  foremost  place  in  the  literature  of  the 
world.  Indeed,  philosophy  and  poetry  are  very  much 
akin.  The  aim  of  philosophy  is  to  express  an  idea  of 
the  world  in  which  its  discords  are  changed  to  har¬ 
monies.  A  system  of  philosophy  is  thus  an  ideal 
creation  as  truly  as  a  great  poem.  The  constructive 
imagination  plays  as  prominent  a  part  in  the  one  case 
as  in  the  other.  The  system  of  Hegel  may  be  com¬ 
pared  to  a  grand  symphony,  the  theme  of  which  is 
continually  recurring,  sometimes  in  simple  forms,  and 
sometimes  involving  the  vastest  and  most  complicated 


334 


ESSAYS 


elements.  In  general  the  ideas  of  philosophy  are 
presented  under  such  large  and  universal  forms  as 
to  exclude  the  more  delicate  and  concrete  treatment 
upon  which  poetry  so  largely  depends,  just  as  the 
artist  does  not  for  the  most  part  find  in  Switzerland 
the  scenes  that  are  best  fitted  for  his  skill.  Yet 
philosophic  ideas  may  be  presented  in  narrower  and 
more  picturesque  forms.  Special  aspects  of  the  great 
whole  may  be  selected  and  the  power  of  the  ideas 
which  philosophy  suggests  may  be  exhibited  through 
the  strifes  and  collisions  of  the  world.  The  questions 
which  it  is  the  business  of  philosophy  to  solve  may 
be  forced  upon  us  by  the  experiences  of  life,  and 
may  suggest  their  own  solutions.  Students  of  philo¬ 
sophy  too  often  express  themselves  in  harsh  and 
abstract  formulas.  He  only  has  got  at  the  heart  of 
philosophic  thought,  or  rather  we  may  say  that  philo¬ 
sophic  thought  has  got  into  the  heart  of  him  alone 
who  can  utter  it  in  simple  speech  and  can  apply  it, 
hardly  conscious  that  he  is  so  doing,  to  the  ordinary 
circumstances  of  life.  We  must  recognize  also  the 
fact  that  there  may  be  a  philosophy  that  is  in  a  spe¬ 
cial  manner  poetic ;  that  the  poet  as  poet  may  have 
a  philosophy  that  is  as  likely  to  be  true  as  any  that 
is  elaborated  by  the  abstract  intellect. 

I  have  assumed  that  it  is  at  least  a  part  of  the  busi¬ 
ness  of  philosophy  to  solve  the  discords  of  the  world. 
Such  discords  exist  under  many  forms,  and  one  or 
another  of  these  may  excite  specially  the  interest  of 
the  philosophic  thinker.  In  regard  to  almost  any 
system,  one  might  ask  what  is  the  special  aspect  of 
the  apparent  discords  of  the  world  which  this  system 
was  primarily  designed  to  meet.  Elsewhere  I  have 
referred  to  the  aspect  of  the  world’s  discords  or  col- 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  BROWNING 


335 


lisions  which  seems  chiefly  to  have  interested  Brown¬ 
ing,  so  far  as  his  earlier  poems  are  concerned.  This 
is  the  relation  between  the  head  and  the  heart. 
This  furnishes  the  motif  of  most  of  his  dramas,  and 
is  not  wholly  wanting  in  any  of  them.  The  same 
element  enters  also  into  some  of  his  more  important 
poems  other  than  the  dramas.  Shortly  after  the 
appearance  of  the  “Dramatis  Personae,”  in  an  article 
in  the  “  Christian  Examiner  ”  I  presented  this  aspect 
of  Browning’s  poems  so  far  as  they  had  then  ap¬ 
peared  ;  and  this  article  without  any  agency  of  mine 
was  placed  in  the  hands  of  Browning,  who,  I  was 
informed,  expressed  himself  as  much  pleased  with  it. 
I  mention  this  to  show  that  the  view  of  his  poems 
which  I  had  taken  was  at  least  near  enough  to  the 
truth  to  interest  him.  I  do  not  understand  that  he 
necessarily  was  consciously  working  out  this  theme 
in  the  earlier  poems.  Whether  or  not  this  was  the 
case,  it  is  impossible  to  decide.  This  constantly  re¬ 
current  theme  at  least  shows  that  the  relation  be¬ 
tween  the  head  and  the  heart  so  interested  him  that 
it  naturally  offered  itself  to  his  mind  in  the  moments 
of  its  creative  activity. 

After  I  had  thus  traced  the  various  developments 
of  this  theme  in  the  earlier  poems,  I  was  greatly  inter¬ 
ested,  in  reading  the  work  of  Professor  Jones  enti¬ 
tled  “  Browning  as  a  Philosophical  and  Religious 
Teacher,”  to  find  that  he  recognized  in  the  later 
poems  also,  as  their  most  important  element,  the  same 
antithesis ;  Jones,  however,  pointed  out  that  in  these 
later  poems  the  head  and  the  heart  found  themselves 
in  opposition  to  one  another ;  the  relation  seemed 
to  have  developed  into  one  of  open  hostility.  The 
exhibition  of  this  relationship  demonstrated  a  certain 


33^ 


ESSAYS 


unity  in  the  poems  of  Browning ;  at  least  it  showed 
that  the  same  theme,  under  one  form  or  another,  had 
interested  him  from  the  beginning.  I  speak  of  learn¬ 
ing  this  fact  from  Professor  Jones’s  book,  because 
when  I  first  read  this  I  was  not  familiar  with  Brown¬ 
ing’s  later  poems.  To  speak  frankly,  I  had  been 
somewhat  repelled  by  them.  I  have  since  read 
them  with  a  good  deal  of  care  and  with  much  enjoy¬ 
ment.  I  recognize  the  harshness  of  many  of  them ; 
but  a  part  are  so  beautiful  that  in  reading  them  I  do 
not  realize  that  they  are  not  equal  in  poetic  power  to 
the  earlier.  Some  of  them  may  be ;  but  so  far  as 
most  are  concerned,  if  after  reading  them  I  chance 
to  turn  back  to  the  earlier,  it  is  to  feel  afresh  the 
unequaled  power  in  these  great  works  in  which  the 
fullness  of  the  poet’s  strength  was  manifested. 

The  relation  between  the  head  and  the  heart  fur¬ 
nishes  thus  the  material  with  which  Browning’s  phi¬ 
losophy  has  to  deal.  The  discord  that  may  arise 
between  them  presents  the  difficulty  of  which  Brown¬ 
ing’s  philosophy  seeks  the  solution.  In  the  earlier 
poems  this  discord  is  less  marked.  In  the  later  it 
is  seen  in  its  full  force. 

We  will  first  glance  at  the  attitude  in  which  these 
elements  are  seen  to  stand  to  one  another  in  the 
earlier  poems.  Afterwards  we  will  examine  the  re¬ 
lation  in  which  they  are  presented  in  the  later  works. 
I  shall  pass  over  the  treatment  of  this  theme  in  the 
early  poems  very  hastily,  because  I  have  given  it  a 
fuller  discussion  elsewhere. 

The  theme  of  the  “  Paracelsus  ”  is  that  the  true 
man  should  develop  equally  the  intellect  and  the  heart. 
Paracelsus  and  Aprile  are  each  an  abstraction.  One 
seeks  only  to  know.  The  other  lives  only  to  love. 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  BROWNING 


337 


The  one  who  loves  only  is  weak.  He  who  would 
know  and  would  live  for  that  alone  is  strong  ;  but  he 
too  is  a  failure.  He  has  emptied  his  world  of  all 
true  interest.  He  awakens  to  learn  his  mistake. 
Paracelsus  cries  : 

“  Love  me  henceforth,  Aprile,  while  I  learn 
To  love  ;  and,  merciful  God,  forgive  us  both  ! 

We  wake  at  length  from  weary  dreams ; 

“  I  too  have  sought  to  know  as  thou  to  love  — 

Excluding  love  as  thou  refusedst  knowledge. 

Still  thou  hast  beauty  and  I,  power.  We  wake.” 

and  again, 

“  Die  not,  Aprile  !  We  must  never  part. 

Are  we  not  halves  of  one  dissevered  world, 

Whom  this  strange  chance  unites  once  more?  Part  ?  Never! 
Till  thou,  the  lover,  know,  and  I,  the  knower, 

Love —  until  both  are  saved.” 

So  in  the  “  Christmas-Eve  ”  the  love  that  was  mani¬ 
fested  in  the  gorgeous  ceremonial  of  St.  Peters  is 
contrasted  with  the  pure  intellect  of  the  Gottingen 
Professor.  In  these  poems  we  find  that  the  mistakes 
and  failures  of  life  are,  at  least  in  part,  due  to  the 
fact  that  the  head  and  the  heart  are  so  often  un¬ 
equally  developed.  Where  the  heart  and  the  head 
are  so  contrasted  that  we  have  to  give  the  preference 
to  one  or  the  other,  it  is,  according  to  the  poet,  the 
heart  to  which  the  preference  should  be  given. 
Thus  in  “  Pippa  Passes  ”  the  song  of  Pippa  breathing 
its  simple  childlike  faith  has  a  power  to  control  the 
lives  of  those  who  hear  it.  The  plots  and  mystifica¬ 
tions  by  which  men’s  lives  were  enveloped  are  pierced 
by  the  magic  of  this  song.  So  the  simplicity  and 
straightforwardness  of  Luria  stand  in  splendid  con¬ 
trast  with  the  cold  intellect  of  the  Italian  emissary 


333 


ESSAYS 


who  watched  and  measured  and  judged.  We  regret 
the  precipitancy  with  which  he  yielded  himself  to  the 
fate  that  seemed  to  him  so  certain  ;  but  though  here 
a  calmer  judgment  would  have  been  the  better,  we 
feel  that  on  the  whole,  he,  as  he  was,  stands  far 
above  the  schemers  by  whom  he  was  surrounded. 
So  the  simplicity  of  Colombe’s  love  broke  through 
the  arguments  of  policy  which  would  ensnare  her. 
Similar  was  the  relation  of  Anael  to  Djabal,  and  of 
King  Charles  to  King  Victor.  In  the  “  Blot  on  the 
’Scutcheon,”  indeed,  we  see  the  ill  results  that  appear 
when  the  heart  is  left  too  much  to  itself,  and  recog¬ 
nize  the  fact  that  a  little  more  common  sense  divided 
among  the  characters  would  have  been  a  good  thing. 

I  have  felt  it  important  to  dwell  upon  the  contrast 
between  the  head  and  the  heart  as  this  exists  in  the 
ordinary  relations  of  life,  even  at  the  cost  of  some 
repetition  of  what  I  have  said  in  substance  elsewhere, 
because  in  no  other  way  would  it  be  possible  to  make 
clear  how  profound  and  far-reaching  is  this  concep¬ 
tion  in  the  work  of  Browning. 

I  wish  to  show  that  in  the  relations  of  life,  apart 
from  all  speculation,  the  interest  of  Browning  was, 
to  a  large  extent,  attracted  by  the  part  which  the 
elements  to  which  I  have  referred  play  in  the  great 
drama  of  the  world,  and  that  it  was  his  conviction 
that  while  the  head  and  the  heart  should  be  united, 
while  each  had  its  proper  place  and  its  proper  work, 
yet  the  heart  should  be  the  true  leader ;  that  in  mat¬ 
ters  of  practice  the  heart  can  cut  the  knot  which 
the  intellect  cannot  untie  ;  that  it  can  discern  the 
path,  while  the  intellect  may  be  in  wandering  mazes 
lost. 

From  this  examination  we  are  prepared  to  find  a 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  BROWNING 


339 


like  relation  between  the  head  and  the  heart  when 
we  rise  from  these  practical  relations  to  matters  of 
philosophic  or  religious  interest.  We  should  expect 
to  find  that  here  also  the  heart  is  recognized  as  the 
leader.  We  meet,  however,  one  important  difference 
in  the  attitude  of  these  elements  towards  one  another 
in  this  realm  of  thought  from  that  which  we  found 
in  the  world  of  life.  It  is  that  while  in  this  latter 
the  intellect  is  presented  as  in  some  sense  over 
against  the  feelings,  in  the  world  of  religious  faith 
there  is  in  the  earlier  poems  very  little  distinct  refer¬ 
ence  to  the  intellect.  The  head  and  the  heart  are 
in  such  perfect  harmony  that  they  appear  to  be 
blended  in  one  common  apprehension  of  the  truth. 
The  intellect  is  so  willing  to  be  led  by  the  heart  that 
it  does  not  even  raise  its  voice  in  conscious  recognition 
of  this  leadership.  It  takes  it  as  a  matter  of  course 
that  the  heart  discerns  the  truth. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  search  for  truth.  The  phrase 
was  not  quite  just.  In  these  earlier  poems  there  is 
neither  searching  nor  finding.  If  these  were  present 
the  intellect  would  have  a  more  distinct  part  to  play. 
There  is  simply  a  recognition  of  the  truth.  Love  is 
seen  to  be  the  most  divine  thing  in  the  world  ;  there¬ 
fore  it  must  be  the  chief  thing.  The  possibility  of  a 
division  between  a  power  de  jiire  supreme  and  a 
power  de  facto  supreme  was  simply  inconceivable, 
or  at  any  rate  unconceived.  Man  loves.  If  the 
power  that  rules  the  world  is  not  love  as  well  as 
power,  then  man  is  superior  to  it.  This  is  something 
not  to  be  thought  of  and  not  to  be  reasoned  about. 
In  the  often  quoted  lines  from  the  “  Christmas-Eve,” 

“For  a  loving  worm  within  its  clod 
Were  diviner  than  a  loveless  God,” 


340 


ESSAYS 


it  is  taken  for  granted  that  the  central  power  in  the 
universe  is  a  power  of  love,  for  it  is  assumed  that 
man  cannot  be  the  loftiest  being  in  the  universe,  and 
that  a  loving  worm  could  not  be  more  divine  than 
God. 

If  we  were  to  analyze  the  logical  method  of  Brown¬ 
ing  and  bring  it  into  consciousness,  as  he  apparently 
did  not,  we  should  find  that  his  test  of  truth  was 
what  it  is  now  common  in  Germany  to  call  the  wert- 
urteil — that  is,  a  judgment  based  upon  value.  This 
judgment  may  separate  itself  into  its  elements.  We 
may  say  such  a  thing  is  so  essential  to  man’s  highest 
life  that  it  must  exist ;  or  we  may  simply  take  for 
granted  that  the  thing  so  essential  exists,  or,  in  other 
words,  that  what  ought  to  be  is.  This  latter  seems 
to  have  been  the  method  of  Browning. 

From  what  has  been  said  it  will  appear  that  the 
philosophy  of  Browning  was  one  with  his  religion. 
It  was  a  philosophy  that  was  one  with  faith.  The 
thought  of  Browning  thus  takes  its  place  in  that  line 
of  philosophic  development  which  began  with  Kant, 
and  which  finds  its  latest  illustration  in  the  Ritsch- 
lian  School  of  Germany.  We  speak  of  it  as  a  philo¬ 
sophical  movement,  but  in  strictness  we  might  as  well 
say  that  it  is  a  movement  away  from  philosophy.  Its 
philosophy  is  to  deny  the  possibility  of  a  philosophy. 
From  Kant  to  Ritschl  those  who  are  influenced  by 
this  movement  rest,  like  Browning,  their  belief,  under 
one  form  or  another,  upon  worth.  That  is  and  must 
be  which  is  worthy  to  be.  From  Kant  to  Ritschl  the 
philosophy  of  those  who  enter  into  this  movement 
is,  like  that  of  Browning,  one  with  religion.  It  is  the 
recognition  of  the  authority  of  the  heart  in  matters 
of  belief. 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  BROWNING 


34i 


Up  to  the  point  to  which  we  have  now  followed 
him  Browning  has  had  little  in  common  with  the 
negative  work  of  this  school.  I  mean  that  thus  far 
he  has  made  little  war  upon  the  philosophy  of  the 
intellect.  He  has  simply  affirmed  with  glad  enthusi¬ 
asm  and  with  absolute  confidence  the  faith  of  the 
heart. 

What  has  been  said  must  not  be  understood  as 
implying  that  Browning  was  directly  influenced  by 
the  philosophical  school  with  which  I  have  compared 
him.  I  recall  no  indication  that  he  had  been  brought 
into  contact  with  these  thinkers.  Their  influence 
was,  however,  far  broader  than  personal  contact  ex¬ 
tended.  The  spirit  which  spoke  through  them  was 
in  the  air.  It  was  a  part  of  the  new  life  of  the  age. 
It  was  an  age  that  rebelled  against  dogma,  and  placed 
its  trust  in  the  instincts  of  the  soul.  This  tendency 
was,  in  a  sense,  impersonal,  though  it  manifested 
itself  in  and  through  persons.  We  find  it  not  only 
in  metaphysicians  and  theologians,  but  in  poets  and 
the  creators  of  the  larger  literature.  It  spoke  through 
Carlyle  and  Emerson.  It  was  like  the  genius  of  the 
spring  quickening  life  in  the  lowliest  flower  as  well 
as  in  the  sturdy  tree.  Tennyson  shared  it  as  truly  as 
Browning. 

I  intimated  in  the  introduction  to  this  paper  that 
there  might  be  a  philosophy  that  was  in  a  special 
manner  that  of  the  poet.  What  we  have  been  con¬ 
sidering  is  such  a  philosophy.  It  is  simply  the  giving 
free  play  to  the  idealizing  elements  of  the  spiritual 
life,  and  accepting  as  true  the  highest  results  of  this 
idealizing  process.  This  may  be  called  philosophy 
in  the  large  sense  of  the  word,  because  it  furnishes  a 
basis  upon  which  belief  may  rest.  It  is  at  the  same 


342 


ESSAYS 


time  poetry,  because  it  is  the  expression  of  an  ideal, 
and  thus  in  a  sense  the  work  of  the  imagination.  If, 
however,  it  is  poetry,  it  is  poetry  believed  in ;  and 
thus  we  come  back  to  the  philosophic  aspect  of  the 
process. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  discuss  the  claims  of 
this  philosophy  upon  our  acceptance,  or  to  question 
whether  or  not  it  needs  any  qualification.  All  that 
is  here  in  place  is  to  point  out  its  nature,  and  to  show, 
as  I  have  tried  to  do,  that  the  method  of  Browning  is 
in  close  accord  with  that  of  the  most  important  philo¬ 
sophic  development  of  our  time. 

The  two  articles  of  Browning’s  philosophic  creed, 
which  was  at  the  same  time  his  religious  creed,  were 
the  belief  that  love  is  the  centre  and  controlling 
power  of  the  universe,  and,  growing  out  of  this,  the 
belief  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul. 

This  confidence  in  the  dominant  power  of  love 
appears  so  frequently  in  these  earlier  poems  that  in 
spite  of  its  importance  it  is  not  necessary  for  our 
present  purpose  to  dwell  much  upon  it.  We  have  a 
splendid  example  of  this  confidence,  and  of  the  judg¬ 
ment  of  worth  upon  which  it  rests,  in  “  Saul,”  in 
which  we  find  also  a  recognition  of  Christ  as  the 
man  if  ester  of  this  love  such  as  we  meet  in  several  of 
these  poems.  This  poem  is  so  much  to  our  present 
purpose,  that,  though  it  is  so  familiar,  I  will  quote  a 
few  lines  : 

“  Would  I  suffer  for  him  that  I  love  ?  So  wouldst  thou  —  so  wilt 
thou  ! 

So  shall  crown  thee  the  topmost,  ineffablest,  uttermost  crown  — 

And  thy  love  fill  infinitude  wholly,  nor  leave  up  nor  down 
One  spot  for  the  creature  to  stand  in  !  It  is  by  no  breath, 

Turn  of  eye,  wave  of  hand,  that  salvation  joins  issue  with  death  ! 

As  thy  Love  is  discovered  almighty,  almighty  be  proved 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  BROWNING 


343 


Thy  power,  that  exists  with  and  for  it,  of  being  Beloved  ! 

He  who  did  most  shall  bear  most ;  the  strongest  shall  stand  the 
most  weak. 

’T  is  the  weakness  in  strength  that  I  cry  for  !  my  flesh  that  I  seek 
In  the  Godhead  !  I  seek  and  I  find  it.  O  Saul,  it  shall  be 
A  Face  like  my  face  that  receives  thee ;  a  Man  like  to  me 
Thou  shalt  love  and  be  loved  by,  forever  :  a  Hand  like  this  hand 
Shall  throw  open  the  gates  of  new  life  to  thee  !  See  the  Christ 
stand  !  ” 

It  was  this  recognition  of  the  manifestation  of  God 
in  Christ,  this  messianic  prophecy,  that  doubtless 
led  Browning  to  put  this  whole  exalted  utterance 
into  the  mouth  of  David. 

In  one  very  striking  passage  in  “  Sordello  ”  Brown¬ 
ing  apparently  expresses  the  belief  that  except  as 
manifested  in  Christ  God  would  be  the  Unknowable. 
This  passage  is  more  important  because  Browning 
arrests  the  progress  of  the  story  and  in  his  own  per¬ 
son  utters  the  thought, 

“  Ah,  my  Sordello,  I  this  once  befriend 
And  speak  for  you.  Of  a  Power  above  you  still 
Which,  utterly  incomprehensible, 

Is  out  of  rivalry,  which  thus  you  can 

Love,  though  unloving  all  conceived  by  man  — ■ 

What  need  !  .  .  . 


But  of  a  Power  its  representative 
Who,  being  for  authority  the  same, 

Communication  different,  should  claim 
A  course,  the  first  chose,  but  this  last  revealed  — 

This  Human  clear,  as  that  Divine  concealed  — 

What  utter  need  !  ” 

Besides  “  Sordello  ”  and  “  Saul  ”  there  are  three 
or  four  other  poems  in  which  the  central  position  is 
given  to  Christ.  This  is  quite  marked  in  “  Pauline.” 
In  “  Christmas-Eve  ”  the  poet’s  own  voice  seems  to 
break  through  the  limits  of  the  allegory  to  utter  this 
conviction.  In  “  Easter-Day  ”  there  is  the  sugges- 


344 


ESSAYS 


tion  of  a  similar  view  ;  but  the  allegory  has  no  rift 
like  that  which  we  seem,  at  least,  to  find  in  the 
“  Christmas  -  Eve.”  An  “  Epistle  Containing  the 
Strange  Medical  Experiences  of  Karshish  the  Arab 
Physician”  and  “Cleon”  seem  to  have  a  similar 
import.  There  may  be  others  which  I  do  not  now 
recall.  We  cannot  reason  positively  from  these 
poems  to  the  poet’s  own  thought  except,  perhaps,  in 
the  case  of  “  Sordello  ”  and  “  Christmas-Eve,”  but  we 
can  hardly  escape  the  impression  that  this  was  the 
view  that  the  poet  habitually  held  of  the  position  of 
Christ  in  the  world.  Such  a  recognition  of  the  mani¬ 
festation  of  God  in  Christ  is  not  inconsistent  with 
the  statement  of  Mrs.  Orr  that  he  “had  rejected  or 
questioned  the  dogmatic  teaching  of  Christianity.”  1 
“The  evangelical  Christian  and  the  subjective  ideal¬ 
ist  philosopher  were  curiously  blended  in  his  com¬ 
position,”  2  as  Mrs.  Orr  tells  us  in  another  place. 

The  “Dramatis  Personae”  has  always  appeared  to 
me  to  be  one  of  the  most  interesting  of  the  volumes 
published  by  Browning.  It  was  written  before  he 
had  passed  out  from  the  inspiration  of  the  companion¬ 
ship  of  Mrs.  Browning  or  from  the  softening  influ¬ 
ences  of  her  death.  It  contains  some  of  his  ripest 
compositions,  as  the  “Rabbi  Ben  Ezra”  and,  in  a 
wholly  different  vein,  the  “Caliban  upon  Setebos.” 
It  is  in  a  special  manner  interesting  as  forming  the 
conclusion  of  what  is  generally  recognized  as  Brown¬ 
ing’s  first  period.  We  find  in  it  an  indication  that  he 
had  passed  or  was  passing  out  from  the  form  of 
thought  to  which  I  have  just  referred,  and  had  begun 
to  take  a  larger  view,  whether  truer  or  more  helpful 
it  is  not  for  us  here  to  consider. 

1  Life  and  Letters  of  Robert  Browning,  vol.  ii.,  p.  540. 

2  Same,  p.  542. 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  BROWNING 


345 


The  last  poem  in  the  “Dramatis  Personae,”  the 
“  Epilogue,”  presents  in  a  very  striking  way  the  chief 
stages  through  which  the  thought  of  the  world  in 
regard  to  religion  has  passed.  These  are,  first,  that 
of  the  worship  of  a  divinity  over  against  the  world ; 
secondly,  the  stage  of  skepticism  ;  and  thirdly,  the 
recognition  of  a  divine  power,  immanent  in  the  uni¬ 
verse.  The  first  speaker,  who,  we  are  told,  repre¬ 
sented  David,  describes  in  magnificent  language  the 
worship  of  the  Temple,  which,  by  the  way,  David 
had  never  witnessed.  We  have  placed  before  us  the 
scene 

“  When  the  singers  lift  up  their  voice, 

And  the  trumpets  made  endeavor, 

Sounding,  ‘  In  God  rejoice  !  ’ 

Saying,  ‘  In  Him  rejoice 
Whose  mercy  endureth  forever  !  ’  — 

“  Then  the  Temple  filled  with  a  cloud, 

Even  the  House  of  the  Lord ; 

Porch  bent,  and  pillar  bowed  : 

For  the  presence  of  the  Lord 
In  the  glory  of  his  cloud, 

Had  filled  the  House  of  the  Lord,” 

The  second  speaker  represents  Renan.  He  refers 
to  the  passing  away  of  the  divine  vision. 

“  Gone  now  !  All  gone  across  the  dark  so  far, 

Sharpening  fast,  shuddering  ever,  shutting  still, 
Dwindling  into  the  distance,  dies  that  star 

Which  came,  stood,  opened  once  !  We  gazed  our  fill 
With  upturned  faces  on  as  real  a  Face 

That,  stooping  from  grave  music  and  mild  fire, 

Took  in  our  homage,  made  a  visible  place 
Through  many  a  depth  of  glory,  gyre  on  gyre, 

For  the  dim  human  tribute.” 

The  Face  had  by  degrees  disappeared.  Man  re¬ 
mained  the  highest  being  in  the  universe. 


346 


ESSAYS 


“  Oh,  dread  succession  to  a  dizzy  post, 

Sad  sway  of  sceptre  whose  mere  touch  appals, 

Ghastly  dethronement,  cursed  by  those  the  most 
On  whose  repugnant  brow  the  crown  next  falls.” 

The  third  speaker  is  not  named,  and  may  perhaps 
be  considered  as  the  poet  himself.  He  represents 
the  reconstruction  of  faith,  only  under  a  somewhat 
different  form.  The  passage  ends  : 

“  Why,  where’s  the  need  of  Temple,  when  the  walls 
O’  the  world  are  that  ?  What  use  of  swells  and  falls 
From  Levites’  choir,  Priests’  cries,  and  trumpet-calls  ? 

“That  one  Face,  far  from  vanish,  rather  grows, 

Or  decomposes  but  to  recompose, 

Become  my  universe  that  feels  and  knows.” 

We  have  here  a  view  of  the  relation  of  God  to  the 
world  different  from  any  that  we  have  before  found 
in  Browning.  It  represents  the  attitude  of  one  who 
had  passed  through  the  doubts  and  questionings  of 
this  doubting  and  questioning  age,  and  had  come  out 
with  a  faith  changed  in  its  form,  indeed,  but  as  strong 
and  as  real  as  that  which  it  replaced.  So  far  as  this 
poem  is  concerned,  the  real  incarnation  of  the  divine 
is  found  in  the  universe  itself.  I  think  that  never 
again,  except  in  “The  Ring  and  the  Book,”  where 
dramatically  it  was  in  place,  does  the  Christ  appear 
as  the  express  manifestation  of  God ;  although  in  the 
struggle  with  doubt  that  the  later  poems  represent, 
such  a  manifestation,  had  it  been  recognized,  would 
have  brought  great  help.  In  one  thing  the  poem  of 
which  I  last  spoke  may  disappoint  us.  Perhaps  the 
poet  himself  may  have  awakened  to  a  disappointment. 
The  poem  is,  as  we  have  seen,  the  utterance  of  one 
who  had  passed  through  the  conflict  with  doubt  and 
had  come  forth  unscathed.  Perhaps  the  poet  thought 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  BROWNING 


347 


he  had  reached  the  point  of  calm  and  perpetual  re¬ 
pose.  His  later  poems  show  that  the  real  battle  was 
yet  to  be  waged.  He  was  to  come  forth  triumphant 
indeed,  though  not  wholly  free  from  the  marks  of  the 
struggle.  It  may  be  that  he  missed  more  and  more 
the  serene  faith  of  the  sweet  singer  who  had  walked 
by  his  side  and  cheered  and  encouraged  him  by  her 
presence.  At  the  same  time,  he  had  in  his  later 
years  burdens  to  bear  such  as  he  had  not  before  ex¬ 
perienced.  There  was  the  perpetual  sorrow  of  his 
great  bereavement.  The  sudden  death  of  a  friend  in 
“  La  Saisiaz  ”  came  as  a  fresh  sorrow  before  the  last 
had  healed.  This  left  him,  for  the  moment,  with  so 
dark  a  view  of  life  that  when  we  read  the  poem  that 
bears  the  name  so  sad  to  him  we  long  for  a  minstrel 
to  sing  to  him  a  song,  not  of  hope  merely,  but  of 
the  fullness  of  his  own  life,  such  as  his  David  sang 
to  Saul.  Whatever  may  be  the  reason,  we  find  in 
the  later  poems  much  more  distinct  recognition  than 
in  the  earlier  poems  of  the  intellectual  difficulties 
that  stand  in  the  way  of  faith. 

In  the  introduction  to  this  paper  I  quoted  a  poem 
from  the  latest  collection  published  by  Browning,  in 
which  he  speaks  of  the  disappearance  of  the  glory 
which  in  the  poet’s  earlier  days  invested  every  nat¬ 
ural  object  for  him.  This  glow  was  found  also  in 
the  world  of  faith.  From  his  whole  nature  seemed 
to  rise  a  flame  of  love  and  trust  that  illuminated  the 
present  and  the  future.  As  the  brightness  which 
had  radiated  from  the  outer  world  tended  to  fade 
somewhat  with  the  waning  of  the  poetic  imagination 
of  Browning,  so  was  it  with  the  spiritual  illumination. 
As  this  flame  sank,  the  nature  of  its  source  became 
more  distinctly  visible.  Though,  before,  the  intellect 


348 


ESSAYS 


and  the  feeling  seemed  to  unite  to  produce  it,  we 
now  see  it  rising  from  the  feeling  alone,  the  intel¬ 
lect  reflecting  it,  perhaps,  but  not  joining  in  the  crea¬ 
tion  of  it.  To  speak  more  simply,  we  have  seen  the 
part  which  the  relation  between  the  head  and  the 
heart  played  in  so  many  of  Browning’s  earlier  poems, 
and  how,  throughout,  the  poet’s  tendency  has  been 
to  give  the  primacy  to  the  heart.  In  these  later 
poems  the  heart  has  still  the  primacy,  and  its  visions 
are  accepted  for  the  truth.  The  intellect,  however, 
professes  ignorance,  and  stands  by  —  we  might  almost 
say  sullenly  —  giving  to  its  eager  companion  no  open 
help.  So  strongly  marked  is  this,  that  Professor 
Jones,  in  the  important  work  that  has  been  already 
referred  to,  accuses  Browning  of  agnosticism,  and 
takes  much  pains  to  show  that  his  agnosticism  has 
no  real  foundation  in  the  nature  of  things. 

There  are  many  passages  that  seem  to  justify  this 
charge.  Take,  for  instance,  the  following  from  “  La 
baisiaz. 

“  Conjecture  manifold, 

But,  as  knowledge,  this  comes  only — things  may  be  as  I  behold, 

Or  may  not  be,  but,  without  me  and  above  me,  things  there  are  ; 

I  myself  am  what  I  know  not  —  ignorance  which  proves  no  bar 
To  the  knowledge  that  I  am,  and,  since  I  am,  can  recognize 
What  to  me  is  pain  and  pleasure  :  this  is  sure,  the  rest  —  surmise. 

If  my  fellows  are  or  are  not,  what  may  please  them  and  what  pain,  — 
Mere  surmise  : 


Pleasures,  pains,  affect  mankind 

Just  as  they  affect  myself  ?  Why,  here ’s  my  neighbor  color-blind, 
Eyes  like  mine  to  all  appearance  :  ‘  green  as  grass  ’  do  I  affirm  ? 

‘  Red  as  grass  ’  he  contradicts  me  ;  —  which  employs  the  proper 
term  ? 

Were  we  two  the  earth’s  sole  tenants,  with  no  third  for  referee, 

How  should  I  distinguish  ?  Just  so,  God  must  judge  ’twixt  man  and 
me. 

To  each  mortal  peradventure  earth  becomes  a  new  machine, 

Pain  and  pleasure  no  more  tally  in  our  sense  than  red  and  green.” 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  BROWNING 


349 


In  several  poems  Browning  thus  insists  upon  the  im¬ 
possibility  of  taking  the  point  of  view  of  another  per¬ 
son.  We  cannot  get  outside  ourselves.  Nescience 
in  general  is  often  insisted  upon  by  Browning  in  these 
poems.  Thus  in  “Parleyings  with  Francis  Furini” 
he  says  : 

“  Of  power  does  Man  possess  no  particle  ; 

Of  knowledge  —  just  so  much  as  shows  that  still 
It  ends  in  ignorance  on  every  side.” 

In  “  A  Pillar  at  Sebzevar  ”  he  contrasts  knowledge 
and  love.  He  says  : 

“  Knowledge  means 
Ever-renewed  assurance  by  defeat 
That  victory  is  somehow  still  to  reach, 

But  love  is  victory,  the  prize  itself.” 

Of  course  this  ignorance  extends  to  spiritual  things. 
In  the  “  Reverie/’  in  “  Asolando,”  we  have  presented 
in  great  contrast  power  and  love.  There  is  evidence 
enough  in  the  universe  of  power,  but  it  is  impossible 
to  prove  that  love  is  manifested  in  it  : 

“  Head  praises,  but  heart  refrains 
From  loving’s  acknowledgment. 

Whole  losses  outweigh  half-gains  : 

Earth’s  good  is  with  evil  blent : 

Good  struggles,  but  evil  reigns.” 

How  easy  would  it  be  for  power  to  sweep  away 

“  What  thwarts,  what  irks,  what  grieves  ! 

How  easy  it  seems  —  to  sense 
Like  man’s  —  if  somehow  met 
Power  with  its  match  —  immense 
Love,  limitless,  unbeset 

“  By  hindrance  on  every  side  !  ” 

There  are  aspects,  he  tells  us,  in  which  this  igno¬ 
rance  is  a  blessing.  If  we  knew  with  absolute  cer¬ 
tainty  that  what  seems  to  us  wrong  is  really  wrong  ; 


35° 


ESSAYS 


if  we  knew  with  equal  certainty  that  there  is  a  divine 
power  that  will  as  assuredly  punish  wrong  as  fire 
burns  the  hand  that  is  thrust  into  it ;  that  thus  “life 
has  worth  incalculable,”  earth  would  be  no  longer 
man’s  probation  place.  Man  would  avoid  wrong¬ 
doing  with  the  same  necessity  that  he  refrains  from 
putting  his  hand  into  the  fire. 

“Once  lay  down  the  law,  with  Nature’s  simple  ‘such  effects  suc¬ 
ceed 

Causes  such,  and  heaven  or  hell  depends  upon  man’s  earthly  deed 
Just  as  surely  as  depends  the  straight  or  else  the  crooked  line 
On  his  making  point  meet  point  or  with  or  else  without  incline  ’  — 
Thenceforth  neither  good  nor  evil  does  man,  doing  what  he  must.” 

The  view  here  presented,  that  a  lack  of  absolute 
knowledge  is  a  help  to  man,  because  it  allows  a  cer¬ 
tain  amount  of  freedom  of  choice  which  would  be 
impossible  if  all  the  issues  of  life  were  thrown  open 
to  him,  is  no  new  thought  with  Browning.  He  has 
given  utterance  to  it  more  than  once  in  the  earlier 
poems,  notably  in  the  “  Easter-Day.” 

I  have  here  cited  only  one  or  two  examples  of  the 
manner  in  which  in  these  later  poems  the  intellect  is 
affirmed  to  be  unable  to  solve  the  mystery  of  exist¬ 
ence,  and  in  which,  on  this  account,  knowledge  is 
pronounced  impossible.  In  every  case,  however, 
such  statements  of  the  failure  of  the  intellect  are 
followed  by  the  most  triumphant  expressions  of  the 
faith  that  springs  from  the  heart.  Thus  in  “  La 
Saisiaz  ”  he  longs  to  gather  up  into  himself  the  fame 
of  Gibbon,  Voltaire,  Rousseau,  and  Byron,  who  had 
all  frequented  the  region  where  he  stood,  in  order 
that  men  might  gain  new  confidence  for  their  own 
faith,  while  they  said  of  him  : 

“  .  .  .  Why,  he  at  least  believed  in  Soul,  was  very  sure  of  God  !  ” 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  BROWNING 


351 


There  is  an  interesting  parallel  to  this  passage 
in  a  letter  quoted  in  Cooke’s  “  Browning  Guide-book  ” 
[p.  307].  The  letter  is  addressed  to  a  lady  in  afflic¬ 
tion.  After  having  expressed  his  faith  in  the  power 
and  love  of  God,  he  said,  “For  your  sake,  I  would 
wish  it  to  be  true  that  I  had  so  much  of  genius  as 
to  permit  the  testimony  of  an  especially  privileged 
insight  to  come  in  aid  of  the  ordinary  argument.” 

I  have  just  quoted  a  passage  from  “  Asolando  ”  to 
the  effect  that  in  this  world  knowledge  can  discern 
power,  but  cannot  with  equal  clearness  recognize  love. 
Later  in  the  same  poem  we  read : 

“  From  the  first,  Power  was —  I  knew. 

Life  has  made  clear  to  me 

That,  strive  but  for  closer  view, 

Love  were  as  plain  to  see. 

“  When  see  ?  When  there  dawns  a  day, 

If  not  on  the  homely  earth, 

Then  yonder,  worlds  away, 

Where  the  strange  and  new  have  birth, 

And  Power  comes  full  in  play.” 

In  these  poems  we  thus  have  presented  over  and 
over  again  the  contrast  between  knowledge  and  faith, 
between  the  utterances  of  the  head  and  the  heart. 
It  is  these  passages  upon  which  is  based,  as  I  have 
already  intimated,  the  charge  of  agnosticism  which 
Professor  Jones  makes  against  Browning. 

In  examining  Professor  Jones’s  treatment  of  this 
matter,  we  notice  a  lack  of  careful  definition  of  ag¬ 
nosticism.  In  fact,  there  are  three  forms  of  agnosti¬ 
cism  which  are  widely  different  from  one  another, 
or  rather  there  are  three  attitudes  of  the  mind  to 
which  the  term  “agnosticism”  may  with  greater  or 
less  propriety  be  applied.  One  of  these  emphasizes 
the  fact  of  the  fleeting  character  of  what  we  call 


352 


ESSAYS 


knowledge.  We  no  sooner  reach  a  limit  than  we 
transcend  it.  What  is  called  the  knowledge  of  one 
age  is  often  by  the  next  pronounced  foolishness.  The 
more  we  know,  the  more  sensible  do  we  become  of 
our  ignorance.  Newton  expressed  something  of  this 
aspect  of  the  case  when  he  said  in  effect,  in  reference 
to  his  discoveries,  that  he  had  only  picked  up  two  or 
three  pebbles  from  the  shore  of  the  ocean.  He  dif¬ 
fered  from  his  contemporaries  perhaps  more  in  his 
sense  of  the  unknown  than  in  his  knowledge.  He  at 
least  felt  the  nearness  of  the  ocean.  Paul  expresses 
one  phase  of  this  truth  when  he  says,  “Whether 
there  be  knowledge,  it  shall  be  done  away.”  I  have 
already  quoted  from  Browning  a  passage  to  the  same 
effect,  and  others  might  be  added.  Browning’s  state¬ 
ment  is  precisely  that  of  Paul.  He  compares  love 
that  is  enduring,  and  which,  so  far  as  it  exists,  is  real 
and  complete,  the  end  and  meaning  of  life,  with 
knowledge,  which  is  fleeting  and  changeful.  Such 
statements  in  regard  to  knowledge  emphasize  one 
aspect  of  it.  Professor  Jones  urges  that  knowledge 
is  always  gaining  something  real,  that  it  is  thus  con¬ 
stantly  advancing.  Browning  said  the  same  in  his 
“Death  in  the  Desert.”  We  see  precisely  what 
Browning  saw  when  he  used  the  negative  expressions 
that  I  have  referred  to,  and  we  know  precisely  what 
he  meant.  Such  expressions  may  easily  be  taken 
too  literally  and  too  abstractly.  We  can  see  this 
in  Paul’s  case.  “We  know  in  part,”  he  says,  “but 
when  that  which  is  perfect  is  come,  that  which  is  in 
part  shall  be  done  away.”  It  shall  be  done  away 
in  the  sense  that  it  is  taken  up  into  the  perfect.  If 
Paul  had  been  a  German  scholar  and  had  read  Hegel, 
he  would  have  used  the  word  aufgehoben ,  which  with 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  BROWNING 


353 


this  philosopher  means  at  once  destroyed  and  pre¬ 
served.  There  is  thus  an  antinomy  in  the  case. 
According  to  one  aspect,  our  little  knowledge  is  lost 
and  proved  to  be  ignorance.  In  another  aspect  it  is 
preserved.  Not  having  at  his  command  that  conven¬ 
ient  German  word  which  I  have  cited,  Paul  could 
only  point  first  to  one  aspect  and  then  to  another : 
“We  know  in  part.”  There  is  so  far  real  knowledge. 
It  “  shall  be  done  away.”  There  we  see  the  aspect 
of  falsity.  So,  too,  there  is  a  contrast  between  love 
and  knowledge,  such  as  both  Paul  and  Browning 
pointed  out.  The  vastest  knowledge  reached  by  man 
is  imperfect  in  quality  as  well  as  in  quantity.  In¬ 
completeness  of  knowledge  affects  what  is  known. 
Nothing  is  truly  known  till  all  is  known,  for  each 
thing  is  related  to  all  things,  and  the  truth  of  each  is 
not  in  the  sum  of  these  relations,  so  that  a  part  is 
true  as  far  as  it  goes,  but  in  the  complete  organic 
relation  of  all.  Love,  on  the  other  hand,  like  beauty, 
however  limited,  is  the  real  thing  so  far  as  it  goes. 
All  this,  I  repeat,  is  one  side  of  an  antinomy,  but  it 
has  its  truth,  and  it  is  to  this  that  both  Paul  and 
Browning  referred.  In  both  cases  the  expressions 
are  obviously  in  part  rhetorical,  although  what  they 
refer  to  is  fact.  When  in  the  same  connection 
Browning  says  :  “  Of  power  does  man  possess  no  par¬ 
ticle,”  he  evidently  does  not  mean  to  be  taken  quite 
literally. 

The  second  form  of  agnosticism  to  be  named,  the 
first,  indeed,  to  which  the  term  is  properly  applied, 
depends  upon  inability  to  form  any  conception  of  the 
matter  referred  to.  This  is  the  agnosticism  of  Her¬ 
bert  Spencer.  With  him  the  absolute  is  unknowable 
because  it  is  inconceivable.  We  have  no  conception 


354 


ESSAYS 


by  which  it  can  be  represented.  Of  this  form  of 
agnosticism  there  is  no  trace  in  Browning.  By  failing 
to  make  such  distinctions,  by  assuming  that  agnosti¬ 
cism  is  agnosticism,  Professor  Jones  is  led  to  urge 
criticism  that  has  no  application  to  Browning.  Thus 
he  says  :  “  But  although  in  this  sense  love  is  greater 
than  knowledge,  it  is  a  grave  error  to  separate  it  from 
knowledge.  In  the  life  of  man,  at  least,  the  separa¬ 
tion  of  the  emotional  and  intellectual  elements  extin¬ 
guishes  both.”  Again  he  says  :  “We  cannot  love  that 
which  we  do  not,  in  some  degree,  know  ”  [p.  321].  All 
this  is  perfectly  true,  but  it  has  not  the  slightest  rela¬ 
tion  to  Browning.  Browning,  if  I  may  use  the  ex¬ 
pression,  knew  precisely  what  he  did  not  know.  The 
most  important  matters  in  regard  to  which  the  intel¬ 
lect  could  not  satisfy  him  were  the  divine  government 
of  the  world  and  the  future  life.  He  knew  exactly 
what  he  meant  when  he  spoke  of  God,  of  the  soul, 
and  of  immortality.  I  do  not  mean,  of  course,  that 
he  thoroughly  comprehended  these,  or  indeed  any. 
thing  else,  but  he  had  a  thought  clear  enough  for  all 
practical  purposes.  The  trouble  was  not  inability  to 
form  a  conception,  but  that  the  intellect  could  not 
prove  to  him  that  there  were  objective  realities  cor¬ 
responding  to  his  thought.  This  is  that  third  form 
of  agnosticism  to  which  I  referred,  the  recognized 
inability  to  prove.  When  Browning  said  in  effect : 
“  I  do  not  know,  but  I  believe,”  he  meant,  as  I  under¬ 
stand  him,  that  he  could  not  demonstrate  the  truth 
of  that  of  which  he  spoke,  but  that  he  believed  it 
none  the  less.  Let  us  take  a  simple  example.  I  have 
quoted  Browning  as  saying  that  it  is  possible  that 
pain  and  pleasure  in  the  men  and  women  about  us 
no  more  resemble  ours  than  the  colors  resemble  one 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  BROWNING 


355 


another  that  are  seen  by  one  gifted  with  normal  sight 
and  by  one  who  is  color-blind.  Applying  this  to  the 
great  world,  he  says  that  so  far  as  his  own  inner  ex¬ 
perience  of  pain  and  pleasure  goes, 

“  All,  for  myself,  seems  ordered  wise  and  well 
Inside  it,  —  what  reigns  outside,  who  can  tell  ?  ” 

Quoting  this,  Professor  Jones  says,  “As  to  the 
actual  world,  he  can  have  no  opinion,  nor  from  the 
good  and  evil  that  apparently  play  around  him  can  he 
deduce  either.” 

“  Praise  or  blame  of  its  contriver,  shown  a  niggard  or  profuse 
In  each  good  or  evil  issue.” 

When  Professor  Jones  says  that  in  regard  to  these 
matters  Browning  affirms  that  he  can  have  no  opinion, 
he  goes  beyond  what  is  written.  Opinion  is  a  very 
different  thing  from  knowledge.  We  all  have  opin¬ 
ions  in  regard  to  a  great  many  things  of  which  we 
have  no  knowledge.  We  know,  in  fact,  that  Brown¬ 
ing  had  opinions  strong  and  intense  in  regard  to 
the  matters  of  which  he  spoke.  These  opinions  he 
claimed  to  hold  by  faith  and  not  as  knowledge.  He 
could  not  demonstrate  their  truth.  He  could  not 
even  by  any  process  of  reasoning  remove  the  diffi¬ 
culties  that  stood  in  their  way.  Browning  is  striving 
to  move  as  carefully  as  though  he  were  trying  some 
scientific  experiment.  He  wishes  that  nothing  that 
is  not  absolutely  certain  shall  be  allowed  to  cast  any 
doubt  upon  the  result.  He  says,  I  cannot  speak  for 
other  people.  What  the  world  is  to  them  I  do  not 
know ;  but  so  far  as  I  am  concerned  all  things  seem 
to  be  ordered  wisely  and  well. 

Professor  Jones  gives  no  clearer  a  definition  of 
knowledge  than  of  ignorance.  He  intimates  several 


356 


ESSAYS 


times,  indeed,  what  it  is  not.  A  little  singularly,  what 
he  calls  knowledge  is  very  similar  to  Browning’s  intel¬ 
lectual  ignorance  plus  faith.  He  says  :  “The  appeal 
to  the  heart  is  the  appeal  to  the  unproved,  but  not, 
therefore,  unauthorized  testimony  of  the  best  men 
at  their  best  moments,  when  their  vision  of  truth  is 
clearest  ”  [p.  326].  Again  he  says  :  “  The  quarrel  of 
the  heart  is  not  with  reason,  but  with  reasons.  Evi¬ 
dences  of  Christianity  ?  said  Coleridge,  I  am  weary 
of  the  word.  It  is  this  weariness  of  evidence,  of  the 
endless  arguments  pro  and  con. ,  which  has  caused  so 
many  to  distrust  reason  and  knowledge  ”  [p.  328]. 
Not  only  does  he  thus  speak  of  knowledge  in  what, 
practically  speaking,  are  the  terms  of  faith,  but  he 
recognizes  the  “faith”  of  Browning  as  knowledge. 
He  says:  “The  ‘faith’  to  which  religious  spirits 
appeal  against  all  the  attacks  of  doubt,  the  ‘  love  ’ 
of  Browning,  is  really  implicit  reason;  it  is  ‘abbre¬ 
viated  ’  or  concentrated  knowledge  ;  it  is  the  mani¬ 
fold  experiences  of  life  focused  into  an  intense  unity. 
And,  on  the  other  hand,  the  ‘  reason  ’  which  they 
condemn  is  what  Carlyle  calls  the  logic-chopping 
faculty.  In  taking  the  side  of  faith,  when  troubled 
with  difficulties  which  they  cannot  lay,  they  are  really 
defending  the  cause  of  reason  against  that  of  the 
understanding.”  Professor  Jones  in  the  same  con¬ 
nection  says  very  much  more  to  the  same  effect,  and 
says  it  extremely  well.  I  for  one  am  for  the  most 
part  in  hearty  agreement  with  him  in  this  matter.  In 
the  light  of  these  quotations,  and  indeed  of  the  whole 
discussion  of  which  they  are  a  part,  the  difference 
between  the  positions  of  Professor  Jones  and  Brown¬ 
ing  seems  to  reduce  itself  to  a  question  of  terms.  In 
the  first  place,  Professor  Jones  describes  his  know- 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  BROWNING 


357 


ledge  as  being  in  its  essence  faith ;  that  is,  as  some¬ 
thing  that  does  not  rest  upon  proof,  as  it  certainly 
does  not  rest  upon  the  senses.  He  then  shows  that 
Browning’s  faith  is  really  knowledge.  This  being  so, 
I  do  not  see  what  contention  he  can  have  with  him. 
I  do  not  see  where  all  the  talk  about  agnosticism 
properly  comes  in.  The  use  of  language  on  either 
side  appears  to  me  to  be  justifiable.  If  one  chooses 
to  say,  of  anything  that  he  is  morally  sure  of,  that  he 
knows  it,  I  for  one  do  not  criticise  him.  If  he  says 
of  anything  that  has  not  the  authority  of  the  senses, 
and  that  does  not  admit  of  actual  proof,  that  he  does 
not  know  it,  but  that  he  believes  it  and  is  in  fact  sure 
of  it,  I  think  this  language  is  not  to  be  criticised. 
The  difference  is  between  intellectual  certainty  and 
moral  certainty.  One  of  these  forms  of  certainty 
may  leave  as  little  place  for  doubt  as  the  other,  but 
the  two  represent  different  forms  of  authority,  and 
there  can  be  no  objection  to  calling  them  by  different 
names.  If  I  had  to  decide  between  the  two,  giving 
my  preference  to  one  or  the  other,  I  think  that  I 
should  accept  the  faith  of  Browning  rather  than  the 
knowledge  of  Professor  Jones.  At  the  same  time  I 
should  hesitate  to  use  the  term  “  ignorance  ”  as  freely 
as  Browning  does  ;  not  that  this  term  is  not  justifiable 
in  the  connection,  but  simply  because  it  may  be  mis¬ 
leading,  and  because  it  fails  to  do  full  justice  to  what 
the  intellect  has  actually  accomplished. 

I  do  not  think  that  Browning  would  have  accepted 
the  compromise  proposed  by  Professor  Jones.  I 
think  he  might  have  replied  :  “  What  you  say  about 
the  best  moments  of  the  best  men  may  give  fresh 
inspiration  to  my  faith,  but  it  contributes  nothing  to 
the  solution  of  my  intellectual  questionings.” 


358 


ESSAYS 


For  the  sake  of  seeing  the  thought  of  Browning 
expressed  in  another  form,  we  may  quote  from  Ten¬ 
nyson  : 

“We  have  but  faith,  we  cannot  know, 

For  knowledge  is  of  things  we  see.” 

This  we  should  hardly  call  agnosticism,  but  it  might 
as  truly  be  called  such  as  the  thought  of  Browning. 

I  have  thus  tried  to  indicate  the  kind  of  unity  that 
runs  through  the  poems  of  Browning.  This  is  no¬ 
thing  mechanical.  It  does  not  make  itself  felt  every¬ 
where.  Browning  was  not  the  victim  of  one  idea. 
The  world  of  thought  and  life  was  open  to  him.  Still 
the  relationship  between  the  head  and  the  heart 
often  forced  itself  upon  his  mind  from  the  beginning 
to  the  end  of  his  literary  career.  It  is  clear  that 
throughout,  both  to  his  poetic  insight  and  to  his  more 
conscious  thought,  the  primacy  belonged  to  the  heart. 
Even  at  the  last,  when  the  intellect  seems  to  rebel 
somewhat  against  this  leadership,  the  heart  remains 
untroubled  and  supreme,  and  sings  with  the  old  con¬ 
fidence,  though  in  different  words,  its  early  song  of 
faith  : 

“God ’s  in  his  Heaven, 

All ’s  right  with  the  world.” 


(£ be  fttoer^ibe 

Electrotyped  and  printed  by  H.  O.  Houghton  <5r*  Co* 
Cambridge ,  Mass.,  U.  S.  A. 


Princeton 


heological  Seminary 


1012  01251  0915 


.ibraries 


Date  Due 


